Pdf.js: Unable to change the text and background colors.

Created on 4 Sep 2012 · 10Comments · Source: mozilla/pdf.js

From Options->Content->Colors, I can change the colors for text and background, but these settings are simply ignored. Black-on-white text can strain the eyes, so I think this feature is very important for the sake of health.

Standalone PDF readers, e.g. Adobe Reader, do support changing the colors for customizing an eye-friendly contrast.

1-viewer 2-feature

Source

zhyi

👍23

Most helpful comment

+1 please

yardenac on 6 Apr 2018

👍6

All 10 comments

Is there a CSS workaround for this?

aleksejrs on 1 Feb 2013

👍1

This is an important feature and accessibility option. Worse still, currently some font effects will obey Firefox's html user font colors, leading to unreadable text.

islisis on 22 Feb 2013

👍1

Any new updates on this? I would thrilled if this feature would be implemented in pdf.js :-)

raztd on 21 Oct 2017

👍4

+1 please

yardenac on 6 Apr 2018

👍6

isgursoy on 31 Jan 2019

👍1

Any update this... this is needed so that we can change the colors of the reader / pdf for dark mode. Where are these colors even set btw? If someone could point me to the right directly I might be able to hack it to at least build an experimental white on black version instead of a black on white version.

We can't just invert the colors because color images will break.

filter: invert(85%)

Does make regular documents go dark but the images are then broken as their color scheme is now invalid.

I think one strategy might be to make the document greyscale but then you lose the colors which isn't fun.

burtonator on 18 Aug 2019

👍1

Wether to leave images alone is debatable. For example, the standalone evince pdf reader inverts colors of images as well. For pictures it leads to strange colors, but graphics and charts usually remain readable and it prevents issues with images having a transparent background or images with a white background that extends under the text.

nlgranger on 9 Jan 2020

For pictures it leads to strange colors, but graphics and charts usually remain readable and it prevents issues with images having a transparent background or images with a white background that extends under the text.

This is indeed a problem, but I would already appreciate having just text inverted.
I have a lot of "just-text" documents from uni I look at everyday and having a nightmode which just inverts text and background would be a great feature when studying late.

Bombastisch on 8 Feb 2020

I just suggest the grayscale is acceptable. Many pdf viewers (e.g. pdf expert) provide many background colors mode. In these model, the document is converted into grayscale and then render the user-defined colors. I think this could make things simpler?