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styled-components VS Dark Reader

Compare styled-components VS Dark Reader and see what are their differences

styled-components logo styled-components

styled-components is a visual primitive for the component age that also helps the user to use the ES6 and CSS to style apps.

Dark Reader logo Dark Reader

Reduce eye strain in your browser with this extension that provides a dark theme for browsing.
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27
  • Dark Reader Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-27

styled-components features and specs

  • Component-Scoped Styling
    Styles are encapsulated within components, ensuring that styles do not leak or conflict with other parts of the application.
  • Dynamic Styling
    Enables dynamic styling with the help of JavaScript variables and props, allowing for highly customizable components.
  • CSS Syntax
    Allows developers to write actual CSS code within JavaScript, making it easier for those familiar with CSS to adapt.
  • Automatic Vendor Prefixing
    Automatically adds vendor prefixes to CSS properties, ensuring cross-browser compatibility without additional configuration.
  • Theming Support
    Provides a built-in theming solution, making it easier to implement and switch between different themes in the application.
  • Server-Side Rendering
    Supports server-side rendering, improving initial page load times and SEO.

Possible disadvantages of styled-components

  • Bundle Size
    Styled-components can add to the overall bundle size, potentially affecting performance, especially in large projects.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires developers to learn the styled-components library and its API, which can be a hurdle for new team members or those unfamiliar with CSS-in-JS.
  • Performance Overhead
    The runtime cost of parsing and injecting styles can impact performance, particularly in larger applications or with frequent style changes.
  • Tooling and Ecosystem
    While improving, the ecosystem around styled-components (e.g., linting, debugging) is not as mature as traditional CSS or CSS preprocessor tools.
  • CSS-in-JS Limitations
    Some CSS features, like advanced selectors or cascading, may be more cumbersome or less intuitive to implement compared to traditional CSS approaches.

Dark Reader features and specs

  • Eye Strain Reduction
    Dark Reader converts bright websites to dark mode, which reduces eye strain and improves visual comfort, especially in low-light environments.
  • Customizable Settings
    The extension offers various customization options like brightness, contrast, and sepia filters, allowing users to adjust the appearance to their liking.
  • Improved Battery Life
    Using dark themes on OLED screens can help save battery life because pixels consume less power when displaying black.
  • Open Source
    Being an open-source project, Dark Reader allows for community contributions and transparency, ensuring better security and continuous improvements.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    Dark Reader is available for multiple browser platforms such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, ensuring a consistent experience across different devices.

Possible disadvantages of Dark Reader

  • Performance Impact
    The extension can sometimes slow down browser performance, particularly on resource-intensive websites or less powerful devices.
  • Inconsistent Behavior
    Not all websites are fully compatible with Dark Reader, leading to occasional rendering issues or incomplete dark mode implementations.
  • Learning Curve
    New users might find the range of settings and customization options overwhelming and might need some time to adjust the extension to suit their needs.
  • Limited Support for Dynamic Content
    Websites with dynamic content or frequent updates may not immediately reflect changes in dark mode, requiring manual adjustments or refreshes.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any browser extension, there are potential privacy concerns if the extension collects browsing data, though Dark Reader's open-source nature mitigates this risk to some extent.

Analysis of styled-components

Overall verdict

  • Styled-components is considered a good choice for many React projects, especially for large applications where modularity and maintainability of styles are important. It has a strong community, extensive documentation, and is widely adopted in the industry.

Why this product is good

  • Styled-components is a popular library for styling React applications. It allows developers to write CSS-in-JS, which means that styles are written in JavaScript and scoped to individual components. This approach offers several benefits, such as easier style management, dynamic styling capabilities, and the ability to leverage JavaScript's full power for styles. Styled-components also supports theming, making it easier to develop consistent design systems.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking to implement a consistent design system with theming capabilities
  • Large-scale React applications where component-based styling is essential
  • Projects that require dynamic styling based on props or state
  • Teams familiar with or willing to adopt a CSS-in-JS approach

Analysis of Dark Reader

Overall verdict

  • Dark Reader is generally well-reviewed and considered good by users who prefer browsing with a dark theme.

Why this product is good

  • Dark Reader is a popular browser extension designed to provide a dark mode for websites that do not natively support it. It helps reduce eye strain during prolonged browsing sessions, especially in low-light conditions, by inverting bright colors and creating a consistent dark theme across websites.

Recommended for

  • Users who experience eye strain from bright screens
  • Individuals who frequently browse in low-light environments
  • People who prefer a consistent dark theme across different websites
  • Users looking for customizable dark mode options for web pages

styled-components videos

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Dark Reader videos

Dark Mode for Google Chrome — Dark Reader

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to styled-components and Dark Reader)
Developer Tools
72 72%
28% 28
Browser Extension
0 0%
100% 100
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Dark Mode
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare styled-components and Dark Reader

styled-components Reviews

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Dark Reader Reviews

7 Best Dark Mode Extensions For Chrome
Using an on-demand dark styles theme generator, this eye-care extensions for google chrome turns on night mode for web pages. Bright color are turned into high contrast, easy-to-read hues at night thanks to Dark Reader.
Source: thedroidguy.com
The 10 best dark mode extensions for Google Chrome in 2022
Dark Reader also provides you with other controls that let you tweak your display however you want. They allow you to change any website’s brightness, contrast, font, and other display elements. You can also store the settings for a particular URL so that you do not have to make these adjustments every time. The most notable feature of Dark Reader is its toggle switch that...
Source: chromeready.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Dark Reader might be a bit more popular than styled-components. We know about 191 links to it since March 2021 and only 169 links to styled-components. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

styled-components mentions (169)

  • 11 Interview Questions You Should Know as a React Native Developer in 2025 📈🚀
    Using the same CSS-in-JS approach as React, you can use libraries like Styled Components to style your components. This allows you to write CSS directly in your JavaScript files (personally not a fan of using these). - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • CSS-in-JS: Pros and cons
    The 2016 release of styled-components popularized the approach, offering a clean syntax and React integration. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Woovi monorepos best practices
    This detail implies if any dependencies can be resolved correctly and if not have a version conflict. As the example we have the styled-components lib, it can have a problem with type Symbol reference where the library doesn´t find your properties of themes because, in your internal code, it uses the symbolObject which is a unique object that refers your set configs. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Top 20 Modern React Libraries To Supercharge Your Next Big Project
    Resource: Styled Components Documentation. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to Use Styled-Components for Elegant React UI Design
    Styled-Components is a library that allows you to write CSS directly within your JavaScript files (CSS-in-JS), ensuring that your styles are scoped to individual components. Rather than managing separate CSS files, you define your styles alongside your component logic. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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Dark Reader mentions (191)

  • Claim for a Missing Tooth
    I suppose they’re using https://darkreader.org/ or something like that! If you implement dark mode yourself, you can add `` to prevent Dark Reader from triggering. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Please Don't Force Dark Mode on Users
    Instead of writing this shitty article, just do like those of us who can't take light mode, and install Dark Reader (that also does light mode). https://darkreader.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Ask HN: Will HN ever have a dark mode?
    I prefer sites not to implement a custom dark mode and instead to make sure their styles invert well, less work for devs, more consistency for me. https://darkreader.org/ https://www.howtogeek.com/446198/how-to-force-dark-mode-on-every-website-in-google-chrome/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: Why did you decide to make the background a bright white color?
    DarkReader will save your eyes, I'm not fond of extensions, but this one is worth it: https://darkreader.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Control iPhone with the movement of your eyes Support (SG)
    DarkReader works pretty well for my needs. It has an iOS Safari Extension. [1] https://darkreader.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing styled-components and Dark Reader, you can also consider the following products

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

Stylebot - Change the appearance of websites instantly. Preview and install styles created by other users on stylebot.me

Ant Design - An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises

Night Eye - Night Eye is a browser extension that enables dark mode on any website you visit. It does not ruin your browsing experience by simply inverting images.

Storybook - Storybook is an open source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, and Angular. It makes building stunning UIs organized and efficient.

Stylus - User Styles Manager - Stylus is a userstyles editor and manager based on the source code of Stylish version 1.5.2.