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Detect the dark mode

Written byPhuoc Nguyen

Category

Level 1 — Basic

Created

03 May, 2020

Last updated

07 Jul, 2022

Contributors

Modern operating systems such as macOS, Windows 10 allow users to choose the appearance they would like to see in all applications.

The following screenshot is taken from the General setting pane in macOS:

The option can be detected by looking at the `prefers-color-scheme` media query.

It can be one of the following values:

`light`: User would like to see the page in the light mode
`dark`: User would like to see the page in the dark mode
`no-preference`: The system doesn't know about the user preferences

By checking against this media query value, we can determine if the user prefers the dark mode or not:

const isDarkMode = window.matchMedia && window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)').matches;

#See also

Detect mobile browsers

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Detect the dark mode

#See also

Questions? 🙋

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