5 Best Lightweight Dark Mode Extensions for Laptops

On a laptop, a dark mode should do its job without adding much work for the browser. One honest note first: on most laptop screens, which are LCD, dark pages save little or no battery, because the backlight stays on whatever the colors. OLED screens are the exception, where dark pixels use less power. Here are five light options. Disclosure: the first is made by Patrick Bushe, who runs this site.

#1. Modern Dark Mode by Patrick Bushe

A free Chrome extension that darkens every site with a single CSS filter, so it doesn't analyze each page's styles.

• What you get: an on/off switch, "Exclude this site", Brightness, Contrast, Sepia / Warmth and Grayscale sliders, a schedule, and Alt+Shift+D to toggle every tab.
• The trade-off: it flips colors rather than restyling pages, so it turns sites that are already dark back to light (exclude those), and some background images can come out inverted.

#2. Dark Reader

The best-known free, open-source dark mode extension, with several modes and fixes for many popular sites.

• The trade-off: its default Dynamic mode analyzes each page's styles, which is more work for the browser than a simple filter. Its Filter mode is lighter if a site feels slow.

#3. Chrome's Auto Dark Mode flag

No extension needed: Chrome has an experimental "Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents" setting at chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark.

• The trade-off: it's a test feature that applies to every site, with no exceptions, and it can change or disappear in any Chrome update.

#4. Your system's dark mode

Set Windows or macOS to dark and Chrome follows, and sites that offer a dark theme switch to it on their own.

• The trade-off: only sites with a dark theme change; the rest stay white.

#5. Lower brightness and Night light

Turning down your screen's brightness saves more battery than any color change, and Windows Night light or macOS Night Shift warms the screen in the evening.

• The trade-off: pages stay white, just dimmer and warmer.

The verdict: Use your system's dark mode for sites that support it and a filter-based extension such as Modern Dark Mode for the rest. To save battery, turn the brightness down. See Modern Dark Mode.