With the recent release of iOS and iPadOS 15, Apple introduced an exciting new feature for the built-in mobile browser: Safari Extensions. These browser add-ons allow users to customize their Safari experience in all sorts of fun ways.

Take Jeffrey Kuiken's “Noir”, for example. This extension allows you to read any website in dark mode, whether or not they support such a thing by default. Simply visit a site and Noir will automatically analyze the page to generate a tasteful dark mode that's specific to that site.

This all happens before the page is even finished loading, so you don't even notice anything different happening, nor will your eyes have to suffer a blinding bright page before the dark mode kicks in.

As Apple used to say, “It just works.”

You can totally customize your Noir experience too, even on a site-by-site basis:

By default, Noir is linked to your device's Dark Mode, so websites only get dark when you want them to. But you can easily override the default behavior, and set site-specific settings as well. Noir even supports for the Shortcuts app to quickly change your settings.

As I've said about so many apps over the years, it's crazy Apple themselves never came up with a solution as elegant and clever as this. The best they could do was the slightly customizable Reader Mode, but activating that was always clunkier than what Noir does for you by default.

For just $3 on the iOS App Store, your mobile web browsing experience is about to get so much better than it ever has been.