Enable Night-Mode (PDF-Reader) / DYSLEXIC MODE / inverted colors / Dark mode for easy reading

danielfrechoso · April 5, 2022

Most pdf readers let you set letters in white and background in black (negative/nightmode/darkmode, whatever they call it).

A toggle button for Light/Sepia/Dark like in Firefox Reader View would be amazing.

REASONS:

1. HELPS DYSLEXIC PEOPLE

2. HELPS PEOPLE LIKE ME: It is better for long reading sessions on the eyes, me and many other people use this feature in other readers

I imagine there are other reasons.

In firefox (just in case you use their PDFjs engine, seems to have a workaround) here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1281116

godelmind · April 7, 2022

On any PDF readers or browsers I just use global color setting for display.
On windows, I use Setting->Accessibility->Color filters->Grayscle inverted.
Keyboard shortcut makes it handy.

ctaskin · April 7, 2022

This is the only reason I'm looking into zotfile+system pdf reader. It would be a great addition!

dstillman · April 7, 2022

@cenktaskin: Note that you can still use an external PDF reader with Zotero 6. There's no need for ZotFile for annotations anymore.

danielfrechoso · April 8, 2022

@dstillman : The nice thing about Zotero's new pdf reader is how integrates annotations, highlighting, etc.. I guess it would be a great addition to zotero, the possibility of inverting colours on the pdf-reader.

Another topic is Zotfile, which I think still is useful to tell Zotero to store pdfs "on certain locations, under certain names". I am loving all the updates on zotero, yet a few corners might still need to be sanded (e.g. zotfile functionalities, or more importantly inverted colours for the reader).

Anyway, thanks for such a useful program.

ctaskin · April 11, 2022

@dstillman: Thanks for the information but this doesn't help as it is. I guess you meant that zotero 6 is able to parse the annotations made by system pdf viewer and somehow save them?

Even if it is the case with my default reader (Evince, Fedora Gnome 41) I can't see the annotations that are made previously, which can be seen on Zotero pdf viewer.

I tried on switching to the Evince, highlighting some text and then if I replace the saved file (system prompts to replace the file on the disk, which is not optimal since I loose the clean, un-annotated pdf), it actually does propagate to Zotero reader and Evince. But the annotations up to now are not possible to be viewed still.

ctaskin · April 11, 2022

With all due respect and thanks to the devs who make Zotero possible, a color inversion on pdf reader shouldn't be complicating other aspects of the software. So quite a valid feature to expect by users.

dstillman · April 11, 2022

@cenktaskin: I wasn't commenting on this feature. You mentioned "zotfile+system pdf reader", and I was just pointing out that you no longer use ZotFile in Zotero 6 to extract annotations. You can continue using an external PDF reader, as has been possible in Zotero forever, and use Zotero 6's annotation functionality to add them to notes. If you're having trouble with that, start a new thread, since it's unrelated to the main topic here.

ThomasJorna · April 26, 2022

Hi! I did not see this topic but I actually recently made a plugin which does just this!

https://github.com/ThomasFKJorna/zotero-night/releases

michaeta · May 6, 2022

A miracle worker my friend. A tasteful Nord theme too.

wanageeska · May 21, 2022

@ThomasJorna I can't thank you enough!

xiaobinee · May 28, 2022

@ThomasJorna Wonderful work！Respect！ LOVE YOU ！❤️

ansoncall · June 13, 2022

@ThomasJorna Well done, thanks!

danielfrechoso · June 26, 2022

This is great, thanks.

salnw · June 27, 2022

Thanks for the night plugin. Once you have the sepia mode finished it will please everyone, and the three pdf reader modes you have already are great.

psyguy · July 26, 2022

Oh wow, such a wonderful plugin, @ThomasJorna! Thanks a lot!

pthwaites7 · August 9, 2022

This is brilliant, @ThomasJorna. But pleeeaase also add the sepia background function!

Kahlya · November 20, 2022

@ThomasJorna Thank you !

Jh_June · December 7, 2022

@ThomasJorna Thank you

iagogv · June 27, 2023

Coming back again to the dark mode issue/discussion/feature request in the zotero pdf-reader. It should be easy, as it is built on pdf.js, which on one hand supports this inversion (1. the link of the first post of the discussion; 2. https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/2071, https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/14874), and on the other hand there is a simple add-on doq (https://github.com/shivaprsd/doq) for pdf.js, which allows to use different themes for pdf-view.

Please @martynas_b, take a look to doq (and doqment [https://github.com/shivaprsd/doqment], which is doq already integrated in pdf.js) to see if this is possible.

It would be a great new feature for Zotero 7.

Thanks!

iagogv · 2025-02-07T23:45:52+00:00

A huge thanks, @martynas_b!

dstillman · 2025-02-08T05:29:34+00:00

Yes, just to note for others, Zotero 7 added a dark mode to the reader, and we've now added additional themes (including sepia, similar to the Firefox Reader View) in the Zotero 7.1 beta:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/121707/available-for-beta-testing-reader-appearance-popup-with-theme-support