Description

Mawu Dark Mode adds six proper dark color schemes — Mawu, Canopy – Mawu, Tide – Mawu, Dune – Mawu, Ember – Mawu, and Fern – Mawu — to the built-in list under Users Profile Admin Color Scheme, right alongside “Default,” “Midnight,” and “Ectoplasm.” Every admin picks their own — there’s no site-wide override. No forced toggle, no floating button: they’re real WordPress admin color schemes, so they behave exactly the way every admin already expects one to. Under the hood, the main dashboard area is intelligently recolored per-element (the same technique dark-mode browser extensions use) so it stays dark and legible across your own screens and every other plugin’s admin pages too — not just a hand-picked list of core WordPress screens.

On top of that, Mawu covers the two places WordPress’s own dark color schemes never reach:

The block editor writing canvas — WordPress’s built-in dark schemes only darken the surrounding chrome (toolbar, sidebar); the actual page you’re writing on stays a bright white iframe. Mawu dark-themes both the chrome and the canvas.
The Classic Editor — full TinyMCE toolbar and writing-area dark styling, for sites still running the Classic Editor plugin.

Features (free, no upsells)

Six dark color schemes — Mawu, Canopy, Tide, Dune, Ember, and Fern — selectable per-user from your own WordPress profile, no site-wide override
Scheduled dark mode — set your own dark hours (e.g. 7pm–7am) on your profile and Mawu switches your admin color scheme to a chosen dark theme automatically during that window, then back to your normal scheme the rest of the time
A separate theme picker just for the (unauthenticated) login screen, since it has no logged-in user to read a preference from
Dark styling for the Gutenberg block editor, including the writing canvas — matching whichever of the six themes you have active
Dark styling for the Classic Editor / TinyMCE
Dark styling for the Customizer
Optional dark wp-login.php screen
No account, no license key, no external service, no telemetry

What this plugin does not do (yet)

Mawu currently only affects wp-admin (the dashboard, editor, and login screen) — it does not add a dark mode toggle for your site’s public-facing pages. Frontend dark mode is a planned future addition.

Screenshots

Installation

Upload the mawu-dark-mode folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” screen in WordPress.
Go to Users Profile and choose one of the six dark schemes under Admin Color Scheme — visit Settings Mawu Dark Mode to configure the block editor/Classic Editor/login screen options.

FAQ

Does this change what my site visitors see?: No. Mawu only affects the wp-admin area (dashboard, editors, login screen) for logged-in users. Your public site is untouched.
Will this work with the Classic Editor plugin?: Yes — enable “Classic editor” dark mode under Settings Mawu Dark Mode.
Does this send any data anywhere?: No. Everything runs locally in your browser and your own WordPress install — no external requests, accounts, or license checks.
Can Mawu switch to a dark theme automatically at night?: Yes. Set your own dark hours on your Profile screen (under “Mawu Dark Mode — Scheduled Dark Mode”) and pick which of the six themes should apply during that window. Outside those hours, your normal Admin Color Scheme choice is used exactly as before. This is per-user, like everything else in Mawu — there’s no site-wide schedule.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Mawu Dark Mode” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Ucheagwu Onyike

Translate “Mawu Dark Mode” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

0.7.1

Fixed white/light text on the “Plugin Details” and “Theme Details” popup (the one you get from Plugins Add New, or Appearance Themes) — it’s a real full-page navigation inside its own iframe, not just an overlay, and wasn’t getting dark-mode styling.
Fixed the dark-mode engine potentially freezing the tab for a couple of seconds right after a page finishes loading, on admin screens with a very large number of rows (e.g. “Number of items per page” set high on a big list). It now recolors the page in small time-sliced batches instead of all at once.

0.7.0

Added per-user scheduled dark mode: set your own dark hours (e.g. 7pm–7am) on your Profile screen and Mawu automatically switches your admin color scheme to a chosen dark theme during that window, then reverts to your normal scheme the rest of the time. Configured entirely on your own profile, no site-wide setting.
Gave every theme’s own accent color real presence throughout the admin content area — links, primary buttons, focus outlines, checked checkboxes/radios, and active tabs now use the theme’s own accent instead of WordPress core’s default blue.
Added semantic status colors (success/warning/error/info) for notices, kept intentionally separate from each theme’s brand accent so status meaning stays unambiguous regardless of which theme is active.
Fixed several color-contrast accessibility issues found during an audit: muted text on five of the six themes fell short of WCAG AA contrast against its actual background; the login screen’s primary button text was very low contrast on several themes.
Fixed the original “Mawu” theme’s block-editor heading color, which had drifted out of sync with its own token.

0.6.0

Theme selection is now fully per-user — removed the site-wide “Force for everyone” setting entirely. Every admin picks their own theme from Users Profile Admin Color Scheme; the (unauthenticated) login screen keeps its own separate theme choice under Settings Mawu Dark Mode Login screen theme.
The five nature themes are now labeled “Canopy – Mawu”, “Tide – Mawu”, “Dune – Mawu”, “Ember – Mawu”, and “Fern – Mawu” in the color-scheme picker.
Fixed a significant bug: the per-element dark-mode engine that actually recolors most dashboard/editor content only ever ran for the “Mawu” theme itself — Canopy, Tide, Dune, Ember, and Fern never got its benefit, leaving white/unstyled regions anywhere critical CSS didn’t already specifically cover. Now runs correctly for all six themes.
Fixed the Themes screen’s theme cards (name bar, hover actions, buttons) rendering with a white background.
Fixed a disabled dropdown (e.g. Settings Reading’s “static page” choosers) keeping its native white background.
Fixed the Dashboard’s Recent Comments widget rows losing a background-color specificity conflict against WordPress core.
Fixed a real upgrade-path bug: sites that had a login screen theme configured before this version could silently lose that choice back to the default. It’s now correctly carried forward.
Fixed the block editor’s post title/heading color on the original “Mawu” theme, which had drifted to a slightly wrong shade.

0.5.0

Added five new dark themes — Canopy, Tide, Dune, Ember, and Fern — alongside Mawu, each with its own take on the block editor canvas, Classic Editor, and login screen.
The “Force for everyone” setting now includes a theme picker, so you can choose which of the six themes gets applied.

0.4.10

Added dark styling for the Customizer (Appearance Customize) — the panel shell and every section/panel title are now dark. Note: on themes with a very large number of Customizer panels, some individual control labels only go dark once you interact with that panel, rather than immediately.

0.4.9

Fixed the “Screen Options”/”Help” tab buttons flashing white on every single admin screen.
Fixed remaining flashes on the Dashboard (Welcome panel, Recent Comments widget, Quick Draft), the Media Library’s Attachment Details dialog, and the Comments screen’s Quick Edit reply box.

0.4.8

Fixed the Add Plugins screen’s tab row (Featured/Popular/Recommended/Favorites) and “Popular tags” box flashing white on load.

0.4.7

Fixed the real cause of an intermittent white flash on hover in the block editor sidebar: on a page with many plugins loading their own editor scripts, our own script could run late enough that a hover happening right after the page loads wouldn’t be caught yet.

0.4.6

Fixed a hover background that got stuck permanently dark after the mouse moved away, instead of returning to normal (found on the AI Engine “Generate Title” row dropdown).
Internal: fixed inline SVG icons never actually being protected from the recoloring engine (a case-sensitivity bug meant the intended skip silently never matched), which was also letting an icon’s individual sub-parts get redundantly recolored instead of the icon as a whole.

0.4.5

Fixed a hover white background on the block editor sidebar’s collapsible panel headers (e.g. the “Tags” panel), where the light background lived on the row around the button rather than the button itself.

0.4.4

Fixed the remaining flash on Add Plugins card details.
Fixed the “Plugin/Theme Details” popup rendering completely white.
Fixed unreadable text in the block editor’s Tags field.

0.4.1

Fixed the legacy Widgets screen flashing white (found proactively, not reported).

0.4.0

Internal groundwork for supporting additional dark themes in the future.
Fixed remaining flashes on the Add Plugins/Add Themes card grids, the color-scheme picker, and list tables on the Plugins and Updates screens.

0.2.9

Fixed the post title not actually applying its dark color (was present but losing a CSS specificity conflict).
Fixed invisible checkbox/radio buttons in Settings screens.
Fixed inconsistent flashing in list tables and form fields.
Removed an internal behavior that was making some borders look inconsistent.

0.2.6

Fixed cards, tables, and notices still briefly flashing light before darkening.

0.2.5

Further reduced the flash of light styling on page load/reload.

0.2.4

Softened the overall color palette for a more comfortable, less stark contrast.
Fixed another caching edge case for Classic Editor’s dark styling.

0.2.2

Fixed the post title not showing in the block editor.
Fixed an issue where a color-scheme update could keep serving an old cached stylesheet.

0.2.1

Fixed the block editor’s writing canvas not darkening on some themes.
Reduced an initial flash of light styling on page load.
Softened background contrast to better match the rest of the dark theme.
Fixed some hover states still showing light styling.

0.2.0

The main dashboard area is now recolored per-element in real time instead of with a single blanket effect, giving more consistent, more legible dark styling across core WordPress screens and other plugins’ admin pages alike.

0.1.0

Initial release: Mawu admin color scheme, block editor dark mode, Classic Editor dark mode, optional dark login screen, settings screen.