[Bug] Night Mode not applied on certain websites in Brave (pages remain bright)

[Saoiray]

Prerequisites

• I searched for any existing report about this bug to avoid opening a duplicate.
• I can reproduce this bug in a new, unmodified web browser profile with Dark Reader installed as the only extension.
• I understand I need to use the Broken Website Report template if this bug I am reporting occurs on a single website.

Bug Description

Some websites render in light mode even though Night Mode is enabled in Brave.

This behavior appears similar to reports previously discussed at Brave Community and Brave GitHub repository. A Brave maintainer suggested that Night Mode related web compatibility issues may belong here since Brave uses Dark Reader internally.

Affected examples include:

https://www.lapresse.ca/

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/

Website Address

https://www.lapresse.ca/

Steps To Reproduce

1. Enable Night Mode in Brave
2. Navigate to https://www.lapresse.ca/ or https://www.journaldemontreal.com/
3. Observe that the pages display using a light theme instead of a darkened theme

Expected Behavior

Websites should be rendered using a dark theme when Night Mode is enabled.

Actual Behavior

The websites appear bright and are not darkened.

Screenshots

Operating System

iOS 26.2.1

Web Browser name and version

Brave Browser. 1.86 (144) and 1.88 (108)

Dark Reader version

Unknown (bundled with Brave Night Mode)

Additional Context

Since this was at a "deadlock" with Brave dev referring to this project, I wanted to try to open an issue here to see if this is something your project is able to assist on.

@Brave-Matt Please forward any night mode related webcompat issues to https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader as this is the library we use to power night mode

(I'm just an active user who tries to help others, something like a middle man on this.)

[MasterLink86]

This very much feels like an iOS implementation issue rather than a Dark Reader issue. Dark Reader works just fine on this site on both the desktop in it's original Chrome extension form, and on Brave's Android version (current stable build). Examples shown below.

Android Brave's Night Mode working just fine on the reported site:

Original Dark Reader extension:

All of this points to an issue on the iOS side of the app. So if Brave is forwarding this to Dark Reader, I feel that is invalid as this is an implementation issue, not an issue with the library, as I'm able to prove the library works on your Android build, and on the original version of Dark Reader.

(I am aware that the iOS version probably is using the Safari version of Dark Reader since Brave on iOS is WebKit I believe, but this still truly doesn't feel like a Dark Reader issue. For accessibility reasons, this feature is quite important, and I personally do have a condition where I rely on enforced dark modes. It's why I use Dark Reader on the desktop as an extension, these bugs almost never happen, and this site certainly works and should be working. Since my eyes iris is slow, even on low brightness, such a page issue can actually hurt. It's why I am able to report this bug absolutely is not happening on Android, and thus simply must be the iOS implementation in Brave.)

[1claudechampagne-crypto]

I can say that Firerfox, on IOS, is acting the same way on those websites with Dark Mode on.

Is Firefox using the same DarkReader library ?

Both Microsoft Edge and Safari use the DarkReader extension on iOS, and perform well on those two websites.

[MasterLink86]

It's good to know that on iOS Edge and Safari using Dark Reader does perform correctly on the same site.

Sadly I don't know what Firefox is using, would be good to know. Especially since Edge and Safari do work with Dark Reader on iOS on these sites. It truly feels like an implementation issue.

[alexanderby]

Yes, they secretly use Dark Reader.

[daddymusprime]

So I don't believe this is an IOS specific issue, or it affects both IOS and Win11 separately. I just came back to Brave browser on desktop for Win11 and ran into the identical issue after having successfully used Dark Reader on the main Firefox fork for years, not hardly running into a single issue across the vast interwebs.