[minimaxir]

Whenever this topic came up about a decade ago, the argument against dark mode/theming was that it added complexity to Hacker News which has the explicit goal of being super simple.

Now, with dark mode able to being controlled by CSS media queries and also able to be done automatically according to system preferences, the complexity argument doesn't hold. It's less complex than the later-added comment collapsing behavior and navigation.

[ryandrake]

You know what would be even simpler? Not specifying colors or typefaces in the CSS at all and letting the user’s browser configuration style it.

[dredmorbius]

If browsers innately and sanely supported default / assignable CSS that ... might be workable. I'd also much prefer browser's default styling was far more sane.

As things stand, some browsers (and, good news, those used by the overwhelming majority of desktop visitors) support CSS-management extensions such as Stylus.

But those don't work for all browsers, and aren't available in particular on Google Chrome/Android.

Firefox/Android does support Stylus, with some limitations: <https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/qgsqob/stylus_for_...>.

Apparently not for Safari / iOS: <https://github.com/openstyles/stylus/issues/299>

I've tweaked my own browser's default stylesheet in the past, and currently use a customised Reader View style for Firefox. Both are problematic, and changing the browser's default styling is probably best avoided these days. My Reader Mode view breaks somewhat and sometimes, but when it hits right, it's much better than stock.