Show HN: pdfdark.com – view pdf's in "dark mode" all on client
pdfdark.comI wanted a way to read PDFs at night and not burn my retinas out so I whipped together this super simple website with Claude to solve my problem.
It uses Mozilla's pdf.js library to load and render a PDF and then inverts the colors with CSS. It has basic controls like zoom in, zoom out, reset zoom, previous and next page. There are some keyboard shortcuts that you can find by toggling the "q" key.
For those who read on mobile and are too lazy to convert all they have, a quick access shortcut to the 'inverted colors' display mode helps.
For those uncomfortable uploading documents, a number of other native apps also dark/inversion mode, including Skim for macOS: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io .
It's unfortunate that this isn't a default option. The only viewer I've seen that happens to be able to do this is Gnome's Document Viewer.
You can invert colors in MuPDF, and someone added a way to save your settings (incl. width and height, position of window, inverted color, zoom) and whatnot upon quitting. This person added a search history too (per PDF). I forgot who though, which might make my comment not-so-helpful.
If interested, I am willing to look for it, might be someone I follow.
Also PDF Tools for Emacs, where PDF can match your theme.
Zathura can also do this. E.g. https://github.com/dracula/zathura
that's sweet, love dracula theme
A better question is how do we not have a dark mode/system settings for HN?
HN is very easy to style with custom CSS, because the HTML never changes. I've been using this theme[1] for many years now.
There are also alternative frontends[2] that support dark mode, like a sibling comment mentioned.
Though it would be nice if the native theme at least respected the user's `prefers-color-scheme` setting.
[1]: https://github.com/pyxelr/hacker-news-bluish-gray
[2]: https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news#web
i use https://hacked.stream
v true
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