Opera browser's dark mode brings noir hue to every web page on Android phones

Wrap your browser in a sweet blanket of night.

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Sean Keane

Dec. 5, 2019 7:00 a.m. PT

If you've been looking to inject more darkness into your web browsing on Android devices, Opera's browser has the solution. Along with the darkened interface, version 55 of the browser can give white sections of web pages a noir look even if they aren't designed that way.

You can manually tweak the color temperature and schedule dark mode to activate at certain times to reduce the blue light your screen gives off. It also lets you dim the onscreen keyboard, but Android Police notes that the overlay this feature uses is experimental and potentially buggy.

The dark mode on Opera's Android browser is pretty extensive.
Opera

Stefan Stjernelund, Opera's Android product manager, noted that the features were designed with the harsh winter months in the company's native Norway in mind.

"With only a few hours of sunlight each day, we noticed that most of today's devices' automatic brightness settings cannot go dark enough, often disturbing everyone's circadian rhythms," he said in a blog post. "We decided to fix this issue with our browser. This version of Opera allows you to suppress blue light and go super dark."

Opera declined to comment about its plans to bring this feature to the iOS version of the app, which is known as Opera Touch.

First published Dec. 5 at 5:12 a.m. PT.
Update, 7 a.m.: Notes that Opera declined comment.