No Desktop Dark Mode? REALLY?

It's insane that I have to use a third-party extension to get desktop dark mode for Canvas. What is this, 2018? Especially if it's already available on mobile, what are we even waiting for? This is just ridiculous, there's posts from BEFORE COVID that have been asking for this!

PATHETIC.

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Chris_Hofer

@Qumarkqumarkqumark …

You are correct that a request for a desktop dark mode has been very popular in the past few years (and maybe more). At the moment, a new Feature Idea process is being worked on by Instructure, but I'm not exactly sure when it will be announced here in the Community. As you may know, a couple months ago the entire Community site got a new look to it (using a different platform), and part of the upgrade was to revamp the Feature Idea process. I'm quite sure that dark mode has been a Feature Idea request. Right now, though, all Feature Ideas are hidden away from us, but the Community Managers are taking good care of them for us. So, it's kind of a "wait and see" situation for now until we hear more about how the new process for submitting and voting on ideas will work. Sorry that I don't have better news for you at this time, but I hope this helps to answer your question in some way.

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Chris_Hofer

@Qumarkqumarkqumark …

Jeff_F

@Qumarkqumarkqumark Which browser extension are you using to enable the dark mode feature? Perhaps it is one I haven't used previously, and I'd like to check it out.

And you’re right that people have been asking for desktop dark mode for some time. The challenge with Canvas isn’t just the interface. Canvas has to display years of existing course content that was authored for light backgrounds, including HTML with fixed colors, PDFs, images, and third-party tools. A global dark mode can safely change the platform chrome, but it can’t reliably transform all that content without breaking readability or accessibility. That risk matters because Canvas operates under accessibility requirements. A dark mode that causes contrast failures or makes content unreadable for some users is worse than no dark mode at all.

Mobile is different because the app controls far more of the environment. On desktop, Canvas has to coexist with different browsers, extensions, operating system themes, custom institutional branding, and external tools. That’s why “it works on mobile” doesn’t translate cleanly to the web.

I’m not saying dark mode shouldn’t exist. I’m saying the web version is a much harder problem than it looks, and releasing something half-working would create more issues than it solves.

Qumarkqumarkqumark

Yes, and all that would justify a significant delay. Not SIX WHOLE YEARS. If Canvas is so helplessly incapable of such global changes to their platform, perhaps they should quit insisting that they be the industry standard? That's exactly the problem, is one company bloats until they become the only game in town, and then become mysteriously helpless to change anything. Excuse me if I have little sympathy for the billion-dollar company that takes six years to accomplish a task, I'm sure they're the ONLY company in existence that ever had to adapt dark mode to their existing code.

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