You are not alone! Firefox 96 now harmonizes more parts of Firefox with your toolbar theme. When the text color on your background tabs is light/white, it triggers Firefox to use a dark background on menus, the sidebar, the Library window, and various built-in pages. It also signals sites that you have a dark theme preference.

What to do about this

The fastest workaround for now is to change your theme to one that uses dark text. By dark text I mean, for example, the built-in Light theme, or an add-on theme with black or dark text on the tabs such as:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-b/

I have attached a screenshot illustrating the difference between a theme with light text on the tabs and dark text on the tabs.

Background / Other Settings

Firefox 95+ is taking more and more cues from your toolbar area theme for how to style other aspects of the browser. There is a setting for some of these, but not all of them.

(A) Right-click context menus, toolbar drop-down panels

Starting in Firefox 89, these would flip to a dark background if the text on the inactive/background tabs was white or light. Firefox 96 has extended this adaptation to more parts of the browser. As far as I know, the only built-in way to avoid this is to change your toolbar theme to one with dark text on the inactive/background tabs. (The other way is the not-officially-supported userChrome.css file route.)

(B) Built-in pages, and websites that have light/dark responsive themes

Starting in Firefox 95, Firefox would inform pages that you preferred a light/dark theme based on your Firefox toolbar theme instead of your system theme. There is a way to decouple your page (content) theme preference from your toolbar theme. At this point, it's only available through the back door...

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste layout.css.prefers-color-scheme.content-override and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to display an editing field, and change the value to whatever you prefer from the list below, then press Enter or click the blue check mark button to save the change.

• 0 => Force a Dark background
• 1 => Force a Light background
• 2 => Follow the System theme (default in Firefox 94)
• 3 => Follow the Browser toolbar theme (default in Firefox 95+)

The about:config page should immediately reflect your saved change.

Thank you... so I need to install this Firefox B by dria and this will take care of it?

Appreciate the reply.

Hi, you can try that one and see whether you like it. If not, keep searching, there are so many choices. The main thing is that the tabs have black/dark text to trigger Light mode.

OK thanks ....I'll see what I can find.

Hi, you can try that one and see whether you like it. If not, keep searching, there are so many choices. The main thing is that the tabs have black/dark text to trigger Light mode.

Please make them stop with this darkmode shit already. Every single update they manage to mess something up, it's not even funny anymore. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants this. Make Firefox theme work as it has for years before, and not force this dark shit on us.

Hi fopibab368, many people feel that way, and it could be easier to turn on/off in the future. Hopefully. For now, this thread describes the currently known workarounds. Do they work for you?

Hi fopibab368, many people feel that way, and it could be easier to turn on/off in the future. Hopefully. For now, this thread describes the currently known workarounds. Do they work for you?

Only partially. The browser feel sluggish since the update, and I still see stupid little things appear in darkmode. Like the little bar bottom left that displays what website is currently being loaded. Everything also seems to have these annoying outlines around it. What was once a nice and relaxing browser to use is becoming increasingly frustrating.

I don't want to change browser but if Firefox keeps this up, I will not have a choice.

I haven't been able to find one that I like with dark text to make it go back to white, so I guess I'm stuck with the dark mode for now.

However, I must say, I have to agree with fopibab368. Don't really care for an update messing with my settings. I understand that updates are necessary but they shouldn't be messing around with what I personally choose to have on my PC.

jscher2000 said

Hi fopibab368, many people feel that way, and it could be easier to turn on/off in the future. Hopefully. For now, this thread describes the currently known workarounds. Do they work for you?

Only partially. The browser feel sluggish since the update, and I still see stupid little things appear in darkmode.

You can start a new question about performance issues:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/new/desktop/form

fopibab368 said

jscher2000 said

Hi fopibab368, many people feel that way, and it could be easier to turn on/off in the future. Hopefully. For now, this thread describes the currently known workarounds. Do they work for you?

Only partially. The browser feel sluggish since the update, and I still see stupid little things appear in darkmode.

You can start a new question about performance issues:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/new/desktop/form

I honestly do not have the energy. I just want my light mode back, without setting it as a "theme" in the browser. If I wanted to be blinded I'd stare into the sun for 48 hours.

I just want my light mode back, without setting it as a "theme" in the browser.

I don't have a quick fix for that at the moment. Changing themes is the fastest way. What's your taste in themes? Maybe you can find a similar one that has dark text on the tabs instead of light text.

fopibab368 said

I just want my light mode back, without setting it as a "theme" in the browser.

I don't have a quick fix for that at the moment. Changing themes is the fastest way. What's your taste in themes? Maybe you can find a similar one that has dark text on the tabs instead of light text.

I have one theme that I like; that I do not wish to alter. It is called "abstract firefox". I already went through a lot of trouble with an earlier useless update by firefox to return dropdown bars to lightmode. Now everything else around it is darkmode.

I wish I could understand their reasoning for forcing these stupid changes down peoples throats. If I didn't know any better I'd say they want nothing else than to lose a good portion of their userbase.

My Firefox internet also turned black for no reason yesterday, this didnt just throw me, it ruiined some pages like google calendar which beacme almost unreadable.

I spent hours trying to get it back and assumed I had done something so "reset" my firefox settings. This then took about another hour to restore add ons and set up tool bars the way I had them.

I finally found a theme that restored some of thw white (why they do not do a blue colorways beggars belief), but there is still a lot of black (Firefox settings, opening search page etc). In short 'OMG what have they done.

This is likely to be the end of it for me and Firefox. Shame I really liked the browser, but at least chrome and edge are white and stay white when you want them to.

Sooo angry at the lack of testing or options.

I finally found a theme that restored some of thw white (why they do not do a blue colorways beggars belief), but there is still a lot of black (Firefox settings, opening search page etc). In short 'OMG what have they done.

If you have a theme with white black/dark text on the tabs, Firefox should use a light theme for the internal pages. If that is not happening, please refer to section (B) in this earlier reply:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1363986#answer-1473180

Will there be a fix for this in an upcoming update? I really don't like the dark mode but I can live with it.Please Firefox try to fix this...it should not be up to anyone but me what theme or text color I prefer.

Please try to fix this ASAP. Thanks. :-)

Just got a update from Firefox...downloaded it and restarted my PC ....still in dark mode. Was this supposed to be a fix?

Appreciate any reply. Thanks. :-)

Hi, version 96.0.1 was for a couple functional problems: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/96.0.1/releasenotes/

Thanks....I read those as well but was still hoping they would have slipped in a fix for this. I'm sure you don't have a crystal ball but can you take a guess as to whether there will be something coming to fix this dark mode. Like I said earlier, I can live with it, just not happily!

There probably are some UI discussions going on outside my view. I wouldn't expect anything like a checkbox before March (Firefox 98) or April (Firefox 99) due to the monthly alpha/beta/release cycle.

At least there's hope. I appreciate your help!

Have a great day!