[Broken Website] DuckDuckGo is white-themed once again

[ghostid234856]

Prerequisites

• I searched for any existing report about this website issue to avoid opening a duplicate.
• I can reproduce this website issue in a new, unmodified web browser profile with Dark Reader installed as the only extension.

Website Issue Description

I've seen a closed issue for this back in 2018, and I've opened a new one to mention this because it seems to have been closed and may not be fully relevant. No present/recent open or closed issue reports seem to be mentioning this, surprisingly

Basically all of the DuckDuckGo site + the search engine results, images, other tabs, etc, are broken again. They are white themed permanently.

Hope yalls can help. This has been tested both on my main Firefox browser and Chrome as well.

Website Address

https://duckduckgo.com/

Steps To Reproduce

1. Install the newest release freshly on Firefox or Chrome
2. Open up DuckDuckGo or choose it as your main browsing engine
3. Google something

Screenshots

Example screenshots:

Operating System

Linux -

Web Browser name and version

Linux - Parrot OS 5.3 (Electro Ara) x86_64 latest, kernel 6.1.0-1parrot1-amd64

Dark Reader version

4.9.63 release

Additional Context

No response

[dioxias]

same thing for me

[partingscientist]

This is due to the website using the darkreader-lock meta tag, which is why I asked for a solution to override this in #11320.

[Uj947nXmRqV2nRaWshKtHzTvckUUpD]

where is this tag documented?

[puelp]

@bershanskiy, is there no way for the user to override the 'darkreader-lock' function?

Because of 'darkreader-lock', sites essentially have the ability to lie to Dark Reader about dark-themed when they aren't.

That would be fine if the user had the ability to override 'darkreader-lock' and manually enable dark mode, but toggling the filters did nothing for me.

Am I missing something?

[Uj947nXmRqV2nRaWshKtHzTvckUUpD]

but why duckduckgo lie about this.. it doesn't make sense to me. could it be to force the user to save preferences with their dark theme in the delicious cookies, this way implementing some kind of tracking?

[alexconstant9108]

@fusionneur that'd be my guess as well. Tracking purposes. Right now, if you browse anonymously, you always get the white theme (because your dark theme preferences aren't saved between sessions)

[alexconstant9108]

Am I missing something?

We need an additional option to override this flag as @partingscientist has mentioned above

[javaskript]

We need an additional option to override this flag as @partingscientist has mentioned above

Agreed. I don't want any website to be able to disallow me from using DarkReader.

[rongil]

I also agree it would be nice to have an override for the lock built into Dark Reader itself for cases like this one where the lock is being used despite the site not being dark-themed.

As a workaround in the meantime, if you're already using uBlock Origin, you can add duckduckgo.com##^meta[name=darkreader-lock] as a static filter to remove the attribute (same for any other site you want to override).

[alexconstant9108]

As a workaround in the meantime, if you're already using uBlock Origin, you can add duckduckgo.com##^meta[name=darkreader-lock] as a static filter to remove the attribute (same for any other site you want to override).

The meta tag does indeed get removed but Dark Reader doesn't seem to care about that fact. My guess is that it detected the meta tag being there before uBlockO removed it... Should I restart DR after loading DDG or...?

[rongil]

As a workaround in the meantime, if you're already using uBlock Origin, you can add duckduckgo.com##^meta[name=darkreader-lock] as a static filter to remove the attribute (same for any other site you want to override).

The meta tag does indeed get removed but Dark Reader doesn't seem to care about that fact. My guess is that it detected the meta tag being there before uBlockO removed it... Should I restart DR after loading DDG or...?

That's odd. I did not restart anything after adding the filter. In fact, just refreshing a previously loaded light-themed DDG search page after adding the filter caused it to become dark-themed. I'm not sure what determines the execution order between the extensions. Maybe try uninstalling and reinstalling DR if you happened to have installed it before uBO originally?

[alexconstant9108]

Nah, DR got installed much later than oBO. It's a weird issue indeed.

[Uj947nXmRqV2nRaWshKtHzTvckUUpD]

switched to startpage instead which in my opinion is better nowadays than duckduckgo

[yegg]

This is only a temporary bandaid until #11047 -- [Performance Issue] DarkReader slowing down DuckDuckGo rendering in Chrome (recent change) -- is fixed, which is slowing down all DuckDuckGo searches and was causing a massive amount of complaints. We offer a dark theme which is a temporary solution and you can force it using URL params, e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test&kae=d&ia=web. In any case, we could use your help getting that performance bug fixed and are open to any other suggestions of better short-term fixes.

[alexconstant9108]

Is anyone now experiencing a similar issue on GitHub where if GH's dark theme is enabled, DR doesn't apply its settings?

[Uj947nXmRqV2nRaWshKtHzTvckUUpD]

Is anyone now experiencing a similar issue on GitHub where if GH's dark theme is enabled, DR doesn't apply its settings?

for me it works. which page are you trying?

[partingscientist]

This is only a temporary bandaid until #11047 is fixed. .... We offer a dark theme which is a temporary solution and you can force it using URL params ....

Thank you for the clarification. I would still advocate for a native solution to solve #11320, considering what Gabriel suggested is not fully supported in Firefox at the moment (1195005).

[partingscientist]

Here's a proper workaround for Firefox users (works also for other browser, but Gabriel's method is probably preferred):

If you are using uBlock Origin:

1. Add the following to the My Filters tab:
   duckduckgo.com##+js(trusted-set-cookie, ae, d)

If you are using AdGuard:

1. Add the following to the User rules tab:
   duckduckgo.com#%#//scriptlet("trusted-set-cookie", "ae", "d")

[Uj947nXmRqV2nRaWshKtHzTvckUUpD]

seems to be working fine now... can any1else confirm to close this?

[Micovec]

I can confirm it's working.