Review Insights · App Store
Noir - Dark Mode for Safari
Jeffrey Kuiken · 1,308 ratings · ★ 4.6
4.6
★★★★★
1,308 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 19 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"safari"
7 negative reviews mention this · 37% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Slows down iOS and MacOS Safari. This app, while effective, prevent safari from loading some pages and radically slowing down load times." - Goldsten591
2
"noir"
6 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good in theory. I have debilitating vestibular migraines and lights trigger extreme vertigo, especially white screens. I was relieved to find and purchase this app and really had my hopes up. Unfortunately, it only works about 60% of the time on Safari. Ei…" - embrne
3
"works"
5 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
4
"mode"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
5
"pages"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Slows down iOS and MacOS Safari. This app, while effective, prevent safari from loading some pages and radically slowing down load times." - Goldsten591
6
"paid"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Used to work well. This app used to work very well and I happily paid to support it. Now I find myself turning it off so frequently that I’ll likely uninstall it soon." - andykram567
7
"extension"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Slows page loads to a crawl. Pages take forever to load with this extension activated." - ContemporaryPeterGibbons
8
"having"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
9
"loading"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
10
"load"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
11
"work"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unreliable & time consuming. Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often." - kethle
12
"website"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good in theory. I have debilitating vestibular migraines and lights trigger extreme vertigo, especially white screens. I was relieved to find and purchase this app and really had my hopes up. Unfortunately, it only works about 60% of the time on Safari. Ei…" - embrne
📋 All 19 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Useless
It does less than you can already do on iphone using display & text size option
Slows down iOS and MacOS Safari
This app, while effective, prevent safari from loading some pages and radically slowing down load times.
Used to work well
This app used to work very well and I happily paid to support it. Now I find myself turning it off so frequently that I’ll likely uninstall it soon.
Slows page loads to a crawl
Pages take forever to load with this extension activated.
Starting to crash websites
I had been using noir for a while and now ever since ios 26, noir has been crashing websites. When I turn it on websites are clunky and buggy but when I turn it off the websites works fine. Developer please look into this
App not downloading
It’s been almost one day and the app is not downloading onto my iPad and Apple will not refund the purchase price.
DO NOT GET
When you enable this is says it can read and alter what’s plinth screens including passwords and cards
效果一般
担心数据安全问题，申请退款不通过，那就差评喽～
absolutely wonderful
I've had noir for years and just realized how good it really is!!
Have to buy it twice?
Absolutely ridiculous I have to buy it once for my phone and s0end another $4 to have a Safari extension for my MacBook. I regret buying it.
“This extension can see sensitive information”
Safari warns that this extension can see sensitive information. “This website will be able to
Read and alter webpages and see your browsing history on this website. This could include sensitive information including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards.” They probably make extra $ selling browsing data.
Read and alter webpages and see your browsing history on this website. This could include sensitive information including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards.” They probably make extra $ selling browsing data.
Unreliable & time consuming
Constantly having to disable on a majority of sites due to poor color mode detection and loading issues. Great when it works but that's not often.
Good in theory
I have debilitating vestibular migraines and lights trigger extreme vertigo, especially white screens. I was relieved to find and purchase this app and really had my hopes up. Unfortunately, it only works about 60% of the time on Safari. Either the website won’t be on dark mode at all, or it will glitch and be dark but the rest of the website is gone, or the website will appear dark and then abruptly change back to bright white after 30 seconds or so (very frustrating and triggers my nausea and vomiting). If you are planning on relying on this like I was, don’t make the same mistake. If you’re fine with it only working sometimes and still having to pay for it, then go for it. Noir, maybe offer a free version of your product until you can guarantee your paid product works?
Have to buy Mac version separately
Great app. Works like it should. But I don’t like that I have to buy it again to use it on my macbook
Custom themes save
No matter what colors i select for a theme, the preview shows black on black, and saves that way (even if the color pickers show any other color selection).
Doesn’t work inside apps
Noir works flawlessly on Safari proper. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work when Safari is launched with an app. For example, clicking a link in an X post, Safari slides open, but no noir.
Requesting access to 1Password account
Appreciate the dark mode but don’t trust the app. Understand it needs access to change darkness but it shouldn’t be asking for access to a password manager. Didn’t even visit that website. Was browsing the news when it asked. Very suspect. Feels like data mining/major invasion for a paid app. Deleting.
Thank you!!
Update 3/27/25: I really appreciate the devs responding and I also really really liked the app (as you can see from my crazy long review below), but I had to eventually un-install it a from my shortcuts a few days after DL.
When I had it installed (I have an iPhone 15 pro max, so not a old-ish iPhone btw. Also I use safari as my phone Internet browser) web pages would not load correctly. I would have to re-load the web pages pretty much all the time or sometimes re-loading wouldn’t work and everything on the page would just look wonky. I really wanted this to work because like I said in my review, I have light sensitivity & I prefer my phone to be on dark mode (I can read everything better and it doesn’t hurt my eyes so much) and some websites are now having options to be able to change to dark mode or will automatically change if that is your phones settings. But the majority don’t have that yet so their background will be white. I have “night shift” turned on for websites like that, but sometimes it’s not enough and still will hurt my eyes/give me a headache.
Anyways, it just didn’t work for me. I had to un-install it because I was getting too frustrated with having to re-load sites, sites looking super weird and sites crashing all the time. I wasn’t really sure what was going wrong but I thought maybe it had something to do with the noir extension and as soon as I turned it off safari started working fine.
Bummed!
----
Just purchased the app and I felt like I had to write a review to tell the devs thank you! I have really bad photophobia/light sensitivity, especially in the evening & at night, that causes super bad headaches and makes my eyes ache and hurt. I switch anything I can to dark mode, night shift etc. I even sometimes wear these goofy light sensitivity glasses (they block specific wavelengths of light). For a long time now I was so annoyed I couldn’t change all of safari on dark mode (a few websites I could but that’s it). I found this app randomly tonight and immediately bought and downloaded it. The instructions to install it on safari were very clear and I had it up and running in just a few minutes. The app also has other colors/themes you can choose besides just black which I thought was pretty cool if someone wants to change it to sepia instead or something. Also the app itself looks really nice and I thought for what it does I would have paid more than $3 for it so I appreciate the devs for keeping it at that price. Anyways, ty to the devs for making this!!
When I had it installed (I have an iPhone 15 pro max, so not a old-ish iPhone btw. Also I use safari as my phone Internet browser) web pages would not load correctly. I would have to re-load the web pages pretty much all the time or sometimes re-loading wouldn’t work and everything on the page would just look wonky. I really wanted this to work because like I said in my review, I have light sensitivity & I prefer my phone to be on dark mode (I can read everything better and it doesn’t hurt my eyes so much) and some websites are now having options to be able to change to dark mode or will automatically change if that is your phones settings. But the majority don’t have that yet so their background will be white. I have “night shift” turned on for websites like that, but sometimes it’s not enough and still will hurt my eyes/give me a headache.
Anyways, it just didn’t work for me. I had to un-install it because I was getting too frustrated with having to re-load sites, sites looking super weird and sites crashing all the time. I wasn’t really sure what was going wrong but I thought maybe it had something to do with the noir extension and as soon as I turned it off safari started working fine.
Bummed!
----
Just purchased the app and I felt like I had to write a review to tell the devs thank you! I have really bad photophobia/light sensitivity, especially in the evening & at night, that causes super bad headaches and makes my eyes ache and hurt. I switch anything I can to dark mode, night shift etc. I even sometimes wear these goofy light sensitivity glasses (they block specific wavelengths of light). For a long time now I was so annoyed I couldn’t change all of safari on dark mode (a few websites I could but that’s it). I found this app randomly tonight and immediately bought and downloaded it. The instructions to install it on safari were very clear and I had it up and running in just a few minutes. The app also has other colors/themes you can choose besides just black which I thought was pretty cool if someone wants to change it to sepia instead or something. Also the app itself looks really nice and I thought for what it does I would have paid more than $3 for it so I appreciate the devs for keeping it at that price. Anyways, ty to the devs for making this!!
FYI, if Safari is crashing on you constantly, Noir is why
I’ve been a Noir user for a long time. Sadly, this weird issue has never been corrected.
It doesn’t seem to affect everyone, but there are numerous others who’ve experienced this, too - noir somehow makes pages glitch and glitch and glitch until the site simply breaks.
It’s literally been months of this, and until whatever causes this is fixed, I’m done.
It doesn’t seem to affect everyone, but there are numerous others who’ve experienced this, too - noir somehow makes pages glitch and glitch and glitch until the site simply breaks.
It’s literally been months of this, and until whatever causes this is fixed, I’m done.
Sentiment summary
89%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
8%
Negative (1-2★)