Wikipedia talk:Dark mode

White flash

Alas, Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC)—is a common issue where the page briefly displays light mode styles before switching to dark mode.

This flicker can be jarring and negatively impact the user experience, especially on slower networks or devices.

Hope it gets fixed soon. Jidanni (talk) 12:31, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Feedback request: monochrome company logos in Infoboxes with light/dark mode radio buttons

There is currently a discussion going on about the display of monochrome company logos in Infoboxes that offer radio buttons for light and dark mode, or white and black logo variants. Your feedback would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes#Monochrome company logos with light/dark mode radio buttons. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Removing beta label from Dark Mode

Hi everyone,

I'm writing on behalf of the former Web team, which implemented Dark Mode on Wikipedia. Dark Mode is now being maintained by the Reader Experience team.

A screenshot of the color menu in the right toolbar which illustrates the Color (beta) tag.

Currently, on the right toolbar the Color menu title still has a "(beta)" label. We believe at this point dark mode is stable enough to not need this "(beta)" label here on English Wikipedia, but we can't unilaterally remove the label in codebase yet because it's not as stable on all Wikipedias.

Do you agree that it's time to remove the beta label?

If so, we would encourage editors to update the interface messages in MediaWiki:skin-theme-description and MediaWiki:Vector-night-mode-beta-tag to simply 'blank' those strings by replacing the content with a dash -.

This would serve to indicate that dark mode is a mature feature and no longer considered beta.

If you don't agree that it's time to remove the beta label, please tell us more about why. We'd like to hear from you.

Thank you! EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 15:57, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 17:42, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

We believe at this point dark mode is stable enough to not need this "(beta)" label Not sure what stable means in this context. I don't think it ever needed a Beta label so removing it is fine. People choose darkmode because it is obviously superior, the fact that its labeled as Beta doesnt mean much to most people. When will it be made the default? Polygnotus (talk) 22:13, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, @Polygnotus. Automatic default is a bit tricky because many users have browser extensions for customization purposes and others are still using dark mode as a gadget. If we made it the default, it would break it for those users. So we would want to have a broader community discussion around making it automatic before proceeding. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 14:13, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

I think something should be done about custom signatures first. I use dark mode and some users still have signatures that are either unreadable or very hard to read in dark mode (I can provide examples if necessary but do not wish to call out particular users). The solution I have in mind is to have two previews in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-signature. One will be in light mode and the other in dark mode so editors can see what their signatures look like in both modes no matter which one they use personally. Warudo (talk) 21:56, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Or just get rid of customized signatures. Polygnotus (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Sometimes, I wish that could happen. But people who'd like to keep them would just reimplement their custom signatures with user scripts. I mean, even IPs (example 1, example 2) have been using custom signatures. Warudo (talk) 20:05, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I added a sentence about dark mode to the policy. I hope people start making better signatures at least. Warudo (talk) 20:42, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Warudo! I agree that custom signatures in dark mode can be an issue, and the preview idea is interesting. For now, though, it’s not as high priority for this work, given that custom signatures are editor-controlled. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

seems fine to me. it will never be perfect, and neither is light mode perfect, so good to go. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:19, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I was getting the "white flash" that another user mentioned above. Then I got a notification that I have gadget enabled that was conflicting with the dark theme. Disabling that fixed the issue. The notification was great but I wonder if we should automatically disable the gadget for everyone if we consider dark mode stable. abandeali (talk) 04:04, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

@Abandeali Which gadget was that? Polygnotus (talk) 04:05, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

The toast that informed me of the conflict let me disable the gadget directly, so I didn't actually pay attention to which gadget it was. Looking at the list of gadgets, I assume it was the Dark Mode gadget: Wikipedia:Dark mode (gadget)

The manual link provided there produces a white flash as well abandeali (talk) 04:11, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

@Abandeali Thank you, that makes sense. Polygnotus (talk) 04:13, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Any reason we don't limit that gadget to the skins that use it on MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition? Perhaps a new thread or a simple edit request? 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 14:36, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Abandeali, thanks for the note! That gadget is community controlled and used by users of legacy skins, so we can't automatically disable it. As @Jdlrobson mentioned below, editors could disable it for Vector 2022 and Minerva skins. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 14:44, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Noting that based on this conversation, I have submitted two edit requests (here and here) to update the Dark mode description and remove the beta tag. Thanks all! EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 17:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

keeps reverting to light mode

every couple weeks or so, the toggle reverts to light mode and flashbangs me. my system and browser setting is also dark mode, so it's not that. i just don't understand why it would revert to light mode instead of automatic, that would at least fix the issue since automatic correctly sets it to dark. it doesn't really make any sense why it would revert to light mode specifically, but it's super annoying. ~2026-22965-49 (talk) 08:29, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-22965-49: Hello, it may have happened because your browser cookies are regularly cleared, and therefore your settings could not be saved. It is suggested that you can create a new account so that your settings will be saved in the account rather than the browser cookie. SCP-2000 16:29, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

automatic - but not default??

i think as its name suggests, the automatic, system mode for dark/light mode should be the default option. its the smallest fix... mainly because having to change it every time is annoying but also because it conceptually makes sense. ~2026-39297-06 (talk) 20:54, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

The problem is that many readers have become accustomed to the site's appearance prior to the introduction of dark mode. Also, they may have enabled various gadgets or scripts to adjust the appearance already. If the site were just being launched today, then defaulting to following the system selection would be a reasonable choice. Unfortunately, we're stuck with trying to minimize disruption to existing users. isaacl (talk) 02:10, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Isaacl are we ? I don't see why we couldn't decide to change the default. It might require even more work to get all the content fixed, but I'm not opposed. Maybe somewhere early 2027 ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:07, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

For better or worse, there is vocal component of the community that is resistent to user interface changes. There is also a large, silent majority of readers whose preferences are difficult to divine. Both of those have historically combined to the community preferring that some types of user interface changes be configurable by an option, and with the default remaining the legacy behaviour. But times change as the population changes (visual editor becoming the default editor for new editors on mobile and perhaps desktop is one example), so perhaps there'll be a greater appetite in future to change the default. isaacl (talk) 22:08, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

The community insisting (after declines) is how we got the dark mode in the first place. AFAIK automatic not being the default has more to do with not enough existing pages/templates/etc being dark-mode-compatible, which must be no longer the case by now. Nardog (talk) 22:32, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Dark mode was enabled by the work to develop Vector2022, and design work to develop a common colour palette accessible via CSS variables (part of the Codex work). That's not to say that it couldn't have been done in a different way without Vector2022, but I think it was good to have a holistic approach that could consider the user interface for different layout options. I agree, though, that more (but I don't believe all, yet) templates and other page components supporting dark mode is helpful. isaacl (talk) 22:49, 4 August 2026 (UTC)