Light and dark mode image in HTML

— 2 minute read

Did you know you can change images bases on the user preferred Color-scheme?

This nifty piece of code could already be used in CSS, but did you know it works directly in HTML?

We can detect if the user prefers a dark or light color schema and show a different image to them based on that!

It will look like this:

HTML Structure

<picture>
  <source srcset="dark-mode.png" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" />
  <img src="light-image.png" />
</picture>

That's is it!

By default, it will show the light image, but it will show the dark image if the person prefers the dark scheme.

Feel free to have a play with this on Codepen.

See the Pen Light and dark mode image in HTML by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

Browser Support

The support for prefers-color-scheme is getting better, but still not a reliable option to choose.

CSS prefers-color-scheme support

Thank you for reading, and let's connect!

Thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter and connect on Facebook or Twitter