Vivaldi does not detect system's dark theme on Linux (Ubuntu)

sofroniecristian

If I pass --force-dark-mode from the command line it works. But it seems that command line flags and experimental feature flags from vivaldi://flags are not the same thing? Does anyone know where could I put this flag in a file in order to have it used all the time?

sofroniecristian

It seems that after following simlinks I get to /opt/vivaldi which is a bash script. If I pass --force-dark-mode inside the script then it works. Like this:

exec -a "$0" "$HERE/vivaldi-bin" --force-dark-mode "$@"

sofroniecristian

Also there is this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/chromium#Dark_mode. Not sure yet if it works for Vivaldi

A Former User

@sofroniecristian Do not modify V’s original files, they’ll get overwritten. If you use a usual launcher (like in DEs etc), copy its .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and modify that copy. If you call vivaldi directly (e.g. via dmenu or a shortcut), create a script somewhere with high priority in your $PATH and call /opt/vivaldi/vivaldi (you gotta use the absolute path because just vivaldi now refers to your script) with your custom args there.

AFAICT the chromium-flags.conf way doesn’t work.

latipun

@potmeklecbohdan If you are on Arch Linux / Pacman, you could do this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Vivaldi#Making_flags_persistent (specific only for Arch package)

BrowserMatt2023

Any update on this?

DoctorG

@BrowserMatt2023 Not tested yet, but perhaps new feature in 6.6.3222.3 Snapshot works.

BrowserMatt2023

@DoctorG This is interesting. Thanks for the reply. I'm sure this feature is referring to The prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature that some sites use. The thing is, sites that use that (like GitHub and MDN Web Docs for instance.. see screenshots below) already work based on my OS color scheme within vivaldi, so this feature doesn't do much except allow me to override that, which I'm not sure is necessary. It also begs the question, if the browser can detect the OS preference via CSS why can't vivaldi properly detect it on Linux and dynamically update it's own theme? Almost every other app/browser I use is able to.

OS Dark:

OS Light:

DoctorG

@BrowserMatt2023 CSS prefers-color-scheme work for me on Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22/23.

Flag force-dark-mode is not a solution and does not show real color scheme of a website.

But Vivaldi does not switch to its own UI's dark theme, that is a known bug.

Veddu

Is this issue only for linux? Since I have the same on macOS.

DoctorG

@Veddu Switching to Vivaldi's dark theme as defined in settings when OS is dark mode is broken on Mac and Linux.

majalmirasol

Google Chrome already does this well in Linux. Since Vivaldi is Chromium, I wonder why this does not work.

DoctorG

@majalmirasol Chrome 126.0.6478.55 does only detect dark mode of UI when Settings → Appearance → Design is set to GTK.

The Vivaldi UI theme is not switched to dark, only the internal Chromium core pages and context menu. Same need of setting GTK.

majalmirasol

In the meantime, found my workaround to just use Settings > Themes > Theme schedule > Manual schedule. Works OK for me.

DoctorG

@Lydia39 Welcome in our Vivaldi Community

Some useful links for you:

Help on Vivaldi Mail (mail client for use with calendars, feeds, mails)
Help on Vivaldi Calendar (the part of Vivaldi Mail client)
User Reputation to use Vivaldi mail account

Do not hesitate to ask, we are a community to help users.

Enjoy browsing with Vivaldi.

motang

I got around this by using Dark Reader and set that to go with Use System Scheme for webpages. I also have manual time for Vivaldi time to change from light to dark.