I have started using Brave on iOS as Chrome was driving me crazy. I generally like it better than Chrome but one of the big reasons why I gave Brave a shot was because Chrome forces dark mode in incognito tabs. I thought Brave would be more customizable in that aspect, but it appears to do the same thing, and even explicitly says so in Appearance settings: “These settings are not applied in private browsing mode”. Why is that? It just really boggles my mind that you obviously have the ability to toggle the appearance of the browser, but you just don’t let people do it in private mode? I hate dark mode, I find it much harder to read light text on a dark background. I would like the ability to use light mode while private browsing, but I would also like to know why this isn’t currently possible, as it just seems like an intentional but perplexing choice.
@DillPickleson I would have to rely on someone from Brave, such as @Mattches to perhaps explain why they don’t have more customization differences.
But I can tell you that the big reason why they want to make sure it’s significantly different is so people realize if they are in private browsing. If they look too similar, then people might end up in normal browsing without realizing. So it would be more of a protection.
But it seems like people can use dark mode in both normal and private browsing, right? This only seems to affect light mode users.
@Saoiray is correct here and this is true for Brave on any platform.
The main reason this is done is to ensure that there is no confusion about whether or not a user is in a Private window/session. Whether your Brave theme is set to Light, dark or some other custom theme setup, Private windows will always appear in the dark purple private window theme.
One thing to note is that, while you can’t change the theme of the browser itself, most sites that display in dark mode give you the option to toggle between light/dark theme on the site level. So if your issue is that sites themselves are displaying dark mode when using Private windows, the site is likely automatically detecting that your window is set to “dark mode” (as you noted above) and is displaying the site to match that setting.
For example, if I visit Wikipedia in a Private window, it automatically shows me the dark mode version of the site:
However, I can change this setting on Wikipedia directly:
All that said, I will ask if there is a particular reason that the Private browsing window “theme” setting can’t send the standard browsing theme setting information to be applied for websites viewed in that window.
Thank you for the reply. While I can understand this being the default setting, I strongly disagree with not allowing users to change this setting. And am I correct that people who use dark mode will also be in dark mode while private browsing? If so, it seems like that defeats the whole point of instituting this restriction.
As for individual sites, I do put them on light mode, but they always seem to go back to dark mode the next time I open a private tab, which can get annoying.
No. Not quite. At least not if you were talking about the theme that Brave has. It’s this theme of the black compared to purple that matter matters in distinguishing that you are in private browsing.
But you are correct that the content of websites can sometimes read what you’re in and is detecting the private browsing as a dark mode. So as such individual sites sometimes will load in dark instead of light mode. Often those websites also have settings where you can change things. But this is what Mattches was saying that he would look into to see if there’s not a way that the developers would say they could give a toggle to at least change the way that that’s sending to websites of whether they detect your on dark or light
Dark Mode
Private Browsing
But you are correct that the content of websites can sometimes read what you’re in and is detecting the private browsing as a dark mode.
Yeah, this is the annoying part to me. I don’t really care about the purple color, the annoying part is when every website I visit is pitch black.
I also feel like for people using dark mode that this isn’t actually very different at all, and that they could easily not realize they are in/not in private browsing.
I would be very happy if Brave could somehow pass to websites that I am using light mode.
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