Introducing Solstice — Dark Mode for Any Website
Meet Solstice: a Chrome extension that intelligently applies dark mode to any website with smart detection, three strategies, and per-site controls.
The Dark Mode Problem
You use dark mode everywhere — your editor, your terminal, your OS. But half the websites you visit still blast you with a white screen. Some have a dark theme buried in settings. Most don’t have one at all. And the existing dark mode extensions either break layouts, invert images, or flash white before kicking in.
Solstice takes a different approach.
What Is Solstice?
Solstice is a Chrome extension that intelligently applies dark mode to any website. Instead of blindly inverting everything, it first analyzes the page for native dark mode support and picks the best strategy automatically.
Three Strategies, One Goal
Native. If a site already has a dark theme (via color-scheme, light-dark(), or CSS media queries), Solstice activates it. You get the site’s own dark design — no visual artifacts, no broken layouts.
Filter. For sites without native dark mode, Solstice applies CSS inversion with automatic hue rotation. Images, videos, and iframes are un-inverted so they look correct. This works well on the vast majority of sites.
Override. For the rare site where filter inversion falls short, Solstice applies blanket CSS overrides — dark backgrounds, light text, styled links — as a last resort.
Solstice auto-selects the best strategy per site, but you can override it manually from the popup.
Smart Detection
When you visit a site, Solstice checks six signals to determine if native dark mode is supported: color-scheme meta tags, prefers-color-scheme media queries, light-dark() CSS functions, CSS custom properties, theme toggle buttons, and current page luminance. These are weighted into a confidence score that drives the strategy selection.
Per-Site Controls
Every site gets independent settings: brightness (80–120%), contrast (80–120%), and sepia (0–100%). Adjustments are saved per hostname and persist across sessions. Double-click any slider to reset it.
No Flash of White
The most annoying thing about dark mode extensions is the white flash before styles load. Solstice prevents this with a FOUC guard — a registered content script that injects a dark background before the page renders. In allowlist mode, it only registers for your allowlisted sites. In everywhere mode, it covers all URLs.
Quality Analysis
After applying dark mode, Solstice samples visible text elements and checks their contrast ratio using the WCAG 2.0 formula. If readability is poor, the popup shows a warning so you can switch to a different strategy.
Two Modes
- Everywhere — Dark mode on all sites. Exclude the ones that don’t need it.
- Allowlist — Dark mode only on sites you’ve explicitly added.
Manage both lists from the Options page with search, pagination, and one-click removal.
Privacy
Everything happens locally. Detection, styling, quality analysis — nothing leaves your browser. No servers, no accounts, no tracking.
Get Started
Solstice is available on the Chrome Web Store. Install it, and every website gets dark mode.
Learn more: Solstice product page · Documentation