PDF Dark Mode: Invert PDF Colors
Turn a PDF into dark mode for reading at night. White pages go dark and text goes light, and the text stays selectable.
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PDF Dark Mode: Invert PDF Colors, free and private
Turn a PDF into dark mode, so white pages become dark and black text becomes light. It is easier on the eyes at night, in a dark room or on an OLED phone, and the dark version is a real PDF you can keep, send or open in any reader.
The text stays selectable and searchable, because the pages are not turned into pictures. The colours are inverted by layers added on top of each page, and the work happens in your browser, so the PDF is never uploaded.
How to turn a PDF into dark mode
- 1
Add your PDF
Press Select a PDF file or drop the PDF onto the page. The tool works on one file at a time.
- 2
Pick a theme and check the preview
Choose Dark grey, Black or Night sepia. Drag the divider on the preview to compare the original page with the dark one, and use the arrows to flip through the pages. Under Colours, Keep colours turns light areas dark but leaves a blue link blue, while Invert colours gives a true negative.
- 3
Choose the pages and the output
Keep text selectable is the default and suits nearly every reader. Pick Flatten to images only if your e-reader shows the dark pages blank or still white. To darken only some pages, pick Odd, Even or Custom under Pages to darken.
- 4
Press Make it dark and download
The result screen shows the old and new file size. Press Download PDF to save the file ending in -dark.pdf. Your original is not changed.
Why use PDFToolz for this
Text stays selectable
The page content is left as it is and the dark look is drawn over it with PDF blend modes. You can still select, copy and search the text, links still work, and the file stays about the same size.
Colours keep their meaning
With Keep colours, a page is inverted in brightness only. Red headings stay red and blue links stay blue, just lighter, so charts and highlights still make sense.
Three dark themes
Dark grey softens the contrast for long reading, Black is a pure inversion for OLED screens, and Night sepia uses warm tones with less blue light.
Private and free
The PDF is changed on your device with pdf-lib and previewed with pdf.js. There is no upload, account, watermark or page limit.
How the dark mode works
A PDF has no dark mode switch of its own, and most PDF readers only offer an inverted view inside their own app. This tool writes the dark look into the file. Each page gets white paper underneath, then a white layer in Difference blend mode that inverts every colour. With Keep colours, a small colour map of the page is laid on top in Hue blend mode, which puts the original hues back while keeping the inverted brightness. Two last layers move pure black and pure white to the theme's background and text colours.
Because the page itself is not redrawn as a picture, the text stays as real text and stays sharp. Acrobat, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Apple Preview and most phone readers all draw blend modes. Keep colours adds a few kilobytes per page for the colour map.
Keep colours or invert colours
Both choices make white pages dark and black text light. They differ in what happens to colour.
- Keep colours: brightness flips but each colour keeps its hue. A dark blue link turns light blue and a red warning stays red. Best for most documents, charts and slides.
- Invert colours: every colour flips to its opposite on the colour wheel, like a photo negative. Blue turns orange and red turns cyan. Pick it for scans of black and white pages, or when you want the classic negative look.
What does not change
Some parts of a PDF sit above the page and keep their own colours.
- Photos are inverted along with the rest of the page, so they look like negatives. Leave photo pages out under Pages to darken to keep them as they are.
- Filled-in form fields, sticky notes and other comments keep their original colours. Run Flatten PDF first if they should turn dark too.
- Pages you leave out of the range are copied unchanged.
- With Flatten to images, the darkened pages are saved as 150 DPI images. They look the same in every reader, but their text can no longer be selected or searched.
Frequently asked questions
Add the PDF, pick Dark grey, Black or Night sepia, press Make it dark and download the result. It is free, has no page limit and the file never leaves your device.
Yes, with the default Keep text selectable output. The pages are not turned into images, so the text, links and bookmarks keep working. Only Flatten to images turns the dark pages into pictures.
Pick Invert colours under Colours. Every colour flips to its opposite, so white becomes black, black becomes white and blue becomes orange. Choose the Black theme for a pure inversion.
That reader does not draw PDF blend modes. Run the tool again with Flatten to images, which saves the dark pages as images that look the same everywhere.
Yes. Photos are inverted with the rest of the page and look like negatives. Leave the pages with photos out under Pages to darken, for example with a custom range such as 2-10.
Keep the original file. Running the dark PDF through the tool again with Black and Invert colours turns most pages back to light, but the original is the cleanest copy.
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