Dark Theme Not Persisting

[Simon Dingley]

After the long long wait for a dark theme in Jira, it finally arrived, which is great. Except, for me and for reasons unknown every time I enable it the change does not persist for long and I can't work out why. Jira keeps reverting back to the white version after a short while which is a real pain. Any ideas on how to find out why and how to fix it?

[yjutard · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon, Hi all,

I'm an Atlassian engineer and I worked extensively on this bug.

I've been able to pinpoint it to a browser extension called "Night Eye." To resolve the issue, I suggest uninstalling this extension from your browser. (you must uninstall it completely, then re-set the wanted light or dark mode)

If you don't have the "Night Eye" extension installed and are still facing the problem, please feel free to report a "dark mode" issue (from the user settings) and be sure to enable "Atlassian can contact me". I'll be glad to assist further.

I've been trying to contact the "Night Eye" support but with no success so far.

Have a great day!

[mikewaltonweb]

I can confirm that Night Eye is affecting the dark theme setting. However, I've also found a combination of settings that don't require uninstalling the extension.

When viewing one of the affected sites (I've been testing using Trello), set Night Eye to "Dark", but also enable "built-in dark theme". So far, this has allowed the site's dark theme setting to persist.

I can't say for sure, but I think something must have changed in with Night Eye in the last few months. When I originally discovered that Atlassian sites have a theme selector, I was trying to set Night Eye to "Normal" and then selecting the theme using the site's built-in selector. Night Eye's version of dark theme didn't look quite as good as the built-in version. But I think at that time, Night Eye wasn't able to detect that there's a built-in dark theme. I don't know how they detect built-in themes, but that seems to have changed since then. Now, using the Night Eye settings I mentioned, the built-in theme is applied and Night Eye doesn't try to override anything.

I can also confirm that their support is not very supportive. I've tried contacting them a handful of times since purchasing that extension a couple years ago and I think I've only ever gotten a response from them once. Thanks @yjutard and Atlassian for actually supporting your products!

[Brian McAuliffe]

Thanks, @mikewaltonweb !

This solution is working for me.

[Simon Dingley]

@yjutard Sorry I have only just seen your response to my post - you may be on to something as I do have Night Eye installed. I will give @mikewaltonwebs solution a try as I don't want to uninstall the extension since I use it extensively on other sites.

[Korey]

I was experiencing this issue - uninstalling Night Eye resolves this. Interesting, excluding the atlassian domain within Night Eye's settings (manage websites) had no effect.

[Jayson Minard]

"Uninstall your required accessibility plugin" is not a great answer.  We don't all use a PAID extension just because we love dark mode.  Sometimes it is because we CANNOT work in other modes at all.

Every other site has no problem remembering its theme, but Atlassian does.  If I set night eyes to normal it does not change the CSS, and what does that have to do with a javascript based setting anyways.  Your code just can't reliably remember its own setting, blame yourselves and you would solve this for everyone, before blaming a browser extension that is both required and not breaking the rest of the internet. 

Something Atlassian does here is odd and could be fixed by Atlassian.

[Jayson Minard]

The value for dark mode appears to be set server-side but not client side, so how does the client side confuse the backend and cause the wrong value to be returned?

[Simon Dingley]

@Jayson Minard I agree. Jira is the only site that I have experienced this issue on.

[yjutard]

Hi @Jayson Minard 

I gave the simple explanation.

The long explanation is that Night Eye is doing a forbidden back-end call to our servers to force your dark mode setting to "light". This forced re-setting on server only takes effect on the next full page refresh, which makes it hard to track.

This is not how an accessibility extension is supposed to work.

[Simon Dingley]

Interesting. Has anything changed recently as it has been less of an issue for me lately, if I am honest.

[Jayson Minard · Accepted solution]

This is not solved, the person marking it solved is "selfish" in that they have a work around to use, but not a solution.  So they mark it solved but then leave this unanswered for the rest of the world.

[Martin Giessing]

I have the same issue using Chrome. Every day I need to reenable Dark Theme, sometimes several times a day. 

[Mamun Reza]

I'm in the same boat, Every day I need to reenable Dark Theme for the Chrome browser 

@Simon Dingley @yjutard Is there any solution for this? 

[C_ Faysal]

Hi Team

this is by far not resolved. just yesterday I upgraded to latest confluence LTS (9.2.0)

and instantly ran into this scenario.

activating DarkMode and refresh or navigate to a different page...broken theme.

its messed up so the top nav bar turns transparent when scrolling and texts are overlapping.

but theme setting stays active in the admin area.

frustrating indeed

fyi:

I have no theme modding add ons installed in any browser.

on windows and Mac I use OS internal Dark setting. so "match system" should detect correctly this is definitely not the case.

regards

[C_ Faysal]

Update:
I just reviewed Look & Feel section in Confluence (admin) and was able to identify some old custom css & formating in several files.

especially the Layouts>Main Page was customised heavily.

after reverting this one back to the default....guess what..detected theme setting persists after refresh :)

those who experience this issue in 2025 with recent Confluence version or any other Atlassian toll that offers theming...please review look & feel for custom modifications that may break theme settings and revert to default or fix to match/include atlassians default decorators

[Ryan Goodwin]

I ran into this with confluence 9.2.0 upgrade test today as well. Every space displays as light theme and doesn't respect the global header color I have set or my system theme, which is dark. 

I entered plugin safe mode, used incognito browser with all extensions disabled, same result. 

I cleared all css, custom html, and customization from local space and global admin. Same result.

If I set the theme to dark while viewing a page, it will toggle to dark as well as set the correct custom global nav bar color. 

However, as soon as I navigate away to another page/space the change reverts and all content is shown in light theme. When I look at the theme selected it shows "match system". Same thing happens even if I select dark. Upon navigating to a new page, Match system is selected when I open theme setting from profile menu.  

When navigating from a space/page to an administration menu, the theme will display correctly as set. So something is different in the rendering between space/page and admin menu setting. 

[C_ Faysal]

Hi

I had exactly the same issue. but you can fix this yourself by taking a closer look to "Look and Feel"

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-98732

cheers

[C_ Faysal]

I cleared all css, custom html, and customization from local space and global admin. Same result.

did you just cleared the text sections? if so please try and hit the "revert" button to bring back defaults. specially inside the stylesheet it will (has to) include the following

<html lang="$languageJs" $requestScopeThemeService.getHtmlAttributesForThisRequest($request)>
<head>
         #requireResource("com.atlassian.auiplugin:aui-design-tokens-themes")
         #requireResource("com.atlassian.auiplugin:design-tokens-api")
</head>

[Ryan Goodwin]

especially the Layouts>Main Page was customised heavily.

after reverting this one back to the default....guess what..detected theme setting persists after refresh :)


This was it. Thank you for posting!

[C_ Faysal]

you're welcome

I'm glad this fixed your theme issue as well as it worked for me

have a great day

cheers

[Sara Gallant]

I'm experiencing the same issue with Chrome: whether I select 'Match Browser Theme' or 'Dark Theme,' it keeps reverting to the Light Theme. When I change the settings and open a new page, it initially loads with the Dark Theme but automatically refreshes within a second, switching back to the Light Theme.

[mikewaltonweb]

I experience the same issue with Edge, so it's not browser-specific. Additionally, I experience this with Jira, Confluence, and Trello, all Atlassian products. However, I just tried changing themes while using a new InPrivate session and theme does seem to persist correctly. I have a variety of extensions installed and I see Brave supports extensions as well (I've never used Brave). So I suspect there must be some conflict happening with an extension. I haven't narrowed down which one(s) might be responsible yet.

[Dan Breyen]

Hi Simon, have you by chance tried different browsers?  I don't know how Atlassian implemented it, if there has to do with cookies or anything like that.  If you pick any of the other settings, like 'Match Browser' or 'Original' do those persist, or do they act like the 'Dark' one.  

I would say if it's not browser specific, and the same problem happens with the other theme, that opening a ticket with support (support.atlassian.com/contact) would be appropriate.  Maybe they're aware of an issue with it.

Do you also have Confluence?  Does the same thing happen there?

Hope that helps.

[Simon Dingley]

@Dan Breyen I am using the Brave browser but with Shields down so there should be no cookie blocking. It happens if I choose `Dark` or `Match Browser` (which is also Dark). If I pick `Original` it would be white/light which is what I keep seeing and don't want.

I don't have Confluence I'm afraid.

I will try contacting support but don't hold out much hope given how many years it too just to implement this feature in the first place.

[Daniel Washburn]

@Simon Dingley  @Dan Breyen was a ticket ever created? I'm having this problem now.

[Dan Breyen]

@Daniel Washburn I don't see any active tickets at https://jira.atlassian.com/ but I may have missed them.  I'd say if you can replicate it, open a ticket at Atlassian Support and see what support has to say.

[Mauro Annetta]

This is happening to me as well, no matter what browser or what I do, quite frustrating honestly more so at midnight when my eyes get killed at every refresh