community April 1, 2020

You like our dark mode? Well, wait until you try our Ultra Dark Mode

Embrace the darkness.

Ben Popper Director of Content

It’s Stack Overflow tradition to come together as a company and invest some actual engineering, product, design, and marketing staff time into an April Fool’s joke each year. We’ve been doing it for the last several years, and as one of the 50 biggest websites in the world, we have the privilege of getting to amuse a lot of people with our annual joke.

Last year we redid the site in the style of a 1990s geo-cities page, and we served that up to everyone who visited starting April 1, regardless of whether or not they asked for it. This year is different. The world is facing what the United Nations calls its most challenging crisis since that body was formed in the aftermath of World War II. People around the world are suffering, and it doesn’t feel like the right moment for a practical joke.

That said, with hundreds of millions of people stuck at home, there is a place in everyday life for entertainment, humor, and levity, something to take your mind off the pandemic, at least for a few minutes. And since we started working on our this well before this crisis took off, we thought we would should at least give anyone who is curious the option to check it out.

In classic Meta fashion, one of the first responses from our power users when we unveiled Dark Mode earlier this week was: ok, this is nice, but it’s not dark enough.

Well, challenge accepted. For those of you who prefer your eye strain minimal and your website barely legible, we present – ULTRA DARK MODE. If you’re interested in checking it out, enable it through your user preferences. It’s available through midnight, April 5th, Eastern Standard Time.

Tags: announcements, april fools, dark mode, stack overflow, stackexchange, stackoverflow, ultra dark mode

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75 Comments

“there is a place in everyday life for entertainment, humor, and levity, something to take your mind off the pandemic”
That’s why we give a speech about Corona even in an April fool’s joke post about an ultra dark mode!

ayub khawar says:

2 Apr 20 at 11:26

yes its some help relief to eye and brain in this rush of coved19

- Don says:
  
  2 Apr 20 at 6:48
  
  What’s happening is not a joke. What if you’re a patient infected by covid-19, or your loved ones, would you find it funny?
  Well I guess not.
  
  Well of course for the one that is not infected will need to find ways to amuse ourselves but what about those who are unfortunate?
  
  I apologise if whatever I’ve said makes people feel uncomfortable. I pray and my thoughts are with the people that were infected by this pandemic. And for the rest stay safe and stay blessed 🙏
  
- Nikhilesh Psthak says:
  
  3 Apr 20 at 1:34
  
  Some relief for eye
  
  - Ali says:
    
    6 Apr 20 at 4:31
    
    Some relief for hands
    
  - Sukakku says:
    
    6 Apr 20 at 5:45
    
    how do i turn off that flashlight cursor? it’s kinda annoying
    
Cin says:

6 Apr 20 at 10:41

I need to blockport 9999

Tagged “april fools”, so that anyone knows.

Savin says:

3 Apr 20 at 4:33

Can you send a latest update for my Phone redmi note 5 pro so that all my apk will become dark mode

Wow, it’s so unusable! I love it!

… but it’s still not dark enough. It needs to be like staring at black construction paper in a sealed room without windows or lights.

Bogdan says:

2 Apr 20 at 5:27

I like it too!

Amorphous Blob says:

3 Apr 20 at 4:50

With sunglasses on and your eyes shut, while asleep or in a coma!

OPKP says:

4 Apr 20 at 11:52

I WOULD LOVE THAT DARK MODE !

Jokes aside you should really make the original dark mode darker, on my monitor black color looks grayish, even when the brightness is on minimum.

Too slow! It’s already April 2 here!

If it doesn’t look like a website painted in Vantablack, I don’t want to use it…

Savin says:

3 Apr 20 at 4:34

This is one of the most perfect update that is ever stated

Seriously, pain the in the eyes is not a joke. Most of my life is with screen. Dark theme is important. Reddit on Android has AMOLED dark – this is mean that background is #000, and it looks good (and better for battery). Please. Maybe this is one of the reason I love my terminal, Vim.

oneblankspace says:

3 Apr 20 at 6:35

I was using non-white windows backgrounds for many years. Now, I have had an injury leaving me extra sensitive to light, Windows 10 no longer allows non-white windows backgrounds except in high contrast mode, and my screen is polarized in such a way I can not see it with my sunglasses on.

This is great, I almost managed to write an answer with this theme on. 🙂
Also, huge thanks for keeping the tradition this year as well. The world goes through wars and massive disasters every year, even though most Americans don’t normally notice that. No emergency or war this long should stop silly things and laughter from happening, otherwise what would be the point of living?

😅🧐

shouldn’t have made it obvious :p

Reminds me of Brian Regan’s black coffee skit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEC6F7ic7ks

Actually love it!! LOL! XD
This should totally stay as an option…

OH COME ON MY EYES WERE SOO HAPPY

Awesome. I _love_ that flashlight idea!

You joke, but with a few tweaks this would be a good AMOLED theme.

I am a coder and I love dark mode

Was it April Fool joke? Anyway, wish to try it. Going to profile and changing settings 🙂

Actually I liked the 1990s style.

Yeah. Funny. But still standard dark mode is too bright. I totally prefer what the Firefox Dark Reader plugin does. Too much contrast? Not for me.

I love it. When browsing at night with all lights off, even the lowest brightness setting on my PC isn’t dark enough, but this is perfect. Please keep it (and fix the few elements that are not darkened)!

I know this is a joke but it makes you realise how much better the regular dark mode could be if they actually used a black background – particularly on mobile devices. I’ve never understood why so many designers like grey, is it so they can feel they’re picking a colour and having input, when #000 just looks so much better as a background.

Ok, thanks for your work.
But my feeling is that this style looks much better than all other integrated:

https://github.com/StylishThemes/StackOverflow-Dark

Ultra dark mode isn’t good enough. We need pitch black 😀

I mean, judging from the initial page if you change the color of text that’s perfect for an AMOLED dark screen

I actually like it. Specially the flashlight mouse. Too bad it is only a joke and will not last 🙁

oneblankspace says:

3 Apr 20 at 6:37

I can’t read highlighted menu items under the flashlight

Love it. If only I could find my way back to my preferences to go back to retina-burning mode…

Love the Ultra Dark Mode. It’d be great to keep that around!

*clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap*
😀

I was actually somewhat disappointed to find out this isn’t a permanent theme option. I would use this.

I like it! But wait, this is a joke.

Yes I love dark mode. But it’s not dark enough. It’s actually greyish. So ultra dark mode will be perfect to less strain our eyes. Will be waiting till April 5th.

So Ultra Dark is OK, but you left out these sub-title elements: https://ibb.co/qmfs3s2
Even on the page where you select the theme you can’t see the headings… I want it dark and contrasting, not just depressingly dark 🙂

It’s bad as is that you consider dark mode something to be taken seriously.

There should be a toggle button to instantly turn on and off the dark mode on the top of the website. It feels too slow to go to settings and change the reference there.

Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was way ahead of this trend: “Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it.”

I just did not get the necessity of the ultra-dark mode. Is it for people with some kind of eye vision disorder?

Actually, I did not understand why everything between that little circular lense should be black and white, but the rest just has color. Would not it be better if you could use the opposite?

David says:

3 Apr 20 at 4:17

It’s a joke for April Fools’ Day (April 1st). The idea is that they’ve delivered dark mode now, and if that’s not dark enough, here’s something absurdly dark.

Why can’t dark mode be applied to the entirety of the StackExchange network, _without_ needing to have an account?

Ha ha April Fool’s, very funny. But seriously, why is “dark mode” actually “very little contrast” mode?

Stack Overflow *can* be both dark *and* have the same great contrast as the light mode … but for some inexplicable reason you’ve chosen not to, making me hope this joke was actually a real (high contrast) dark mode.

I just turn off my monitor to get the Ultra Darkmode

I actually like the ultra dark mode. Please keep it. Maybe without the spotlight, but that was fun too ;).

My only feedback about both normal dark and ultra dark is that the yellowish background stuff on the site seems off. It needs a different color to look right.

We need a Black Hole Mode, not even a single pixel on!

Can you guys put this into all Stack Exchange fourms/sites? It would be greatly appreciated.

i actually like the ultra dark mode – can we please keep it?

After two days of using the dark mode I switched back to the light mode. Could you change the font colours, to make reading easier. All the blue and orange fonts should be replaced with intense gold and green, in my opinion. The white can also be more bright.

The flashlight in ultra dark is funny. But as others have said: dark mode isn’t dark enough. Ultra dark isn’t low contrast enough to be as unusable as intended. In fact ultra dark looks pretty nice except for some syntax highlighting (and for real use it should be a little higher contrast but doesn’t need much). For reference my Dark Reader Chrome plugin makes white mode have a black background (instead of gray) and it looks great. Is dark mode coming to other stack exchange sites as well? This could have been implemented in a way that the other sites could inherit (although that may require SASS or something).

It looks awesome. Great! Job.

PLEASE convert this from April Fool’s joke to actual feature? Dark Mode is great, but this is really nice!

Please make it permanent, but with high contrast text and yellow links.

Even with my monitors on lowest brightness setting, it’s still too bright, and as a software engineer, I’m always in front of the screens. And as a recent Lasik patient, dark mode really eases the stress on the eyes even more so I can keep doing my job without wearing double sunglasses (lol, not joking). Darkmode on sites and software is the first thing I do. Even Microsoft Notepad has a “Black Notepad” version! SO finally got a dark mode and that makes me happier to stay on the site longer. Thanks!

I like the dark mode of stackoverflow. Would be very happy if there is a day/night mode.

Please dark mode is necessity nowadays

The ultra dark mode is beautiful, especially on OLED screens. Please make it stay <3

Can you please leave that up? It’s actually a cool Easter egg, and not actually all that unusable either.

I like it! Even if you wake up at 4am with all lights off, this would still not hurt your eye.
I mean, SO can set this trend. It is really usable.

Actually if you put the font color of dark mode to ultra dark mode, remove the flashlight cursor and leave the sticky article… well you can tell us in a couple months if Ultra Dark is more popular than Dark