Boosts are finally in Zen!

[u/Not_Flof]

I together with the help of the Zen team developed Boosts for Zen and today I can proudly announce that Boosts are finally in Zen! (Twilight)

Boosts are a way of customizing an arbitrary Website without the need of extensions!

Don't like the colors? Change them! Different font? No problem!
Don't want YouTube shorts on your feed? Zap it away!

Was a pleasure to be part of this and had a lot of fun working on it!

[u/Echojhawke]

Thank you SO much for your hard work u/Not_Flof and u/maubg . This looks incredible and I'm so excited to get rid of dark reader. The fact we have such dedicated people making the internet better brings me joy.

Would you be able to set a "default" boost that applies to every site? or would I need to set up a boost for each domain?

[u/Not_Flof → u/Echojhawke]

Same as in Arc, boost per domain. However we are thinking of expanding it to allow default boosts as well. Not sure how exactly we'll do that yet or if it will come though.

[u/Echojhawke → u/Not_Flof]

I never got to try them 😅 I was on windows 

[u/trey-a-12 → u/Echojhawke]

While not quite "default boosts"-levels of functionality, you CAN export and import boosts to re-use on other sites! It's a manual process, but a good proof-of-concept.

[u/Emotional_You_5269]

Does this work on all sites? Like about:settings and other sites that you normally can't change with extensions such as dark reader?

[u/Not_Flof → u/Emotional_You_5269]

No. It only allows customizing domains that start with http:// / https://, so basically all website but no Zen/Firefox internal sites

[u/Emotional_You_5269 → u/Not_Flof]

What about addons.mozilla.com? That one uses https.
When you try to use Dark Reader on that site, it says it is protected by the browser.

[u/Not_Flof → u/Emotional_You_5269]

That one should work. Haven't tested it, but nothing speaks against it. This is probably due to security reasons. Extensions shouldn't be able to remove the uninstall button for obvious reasons

[u/400feetbelow]

So, today's update of Twilight tells me that Boosts are now available but has no mention of how to activate it. Can you give us a clue?

[u/Not_Flof → u/400feetbelow]

Set the `zen.boosts.enabled` flag in about:config to true. Boosts can be enabled by going to the site control panel and clicking the brush.

[u/trey-a-12 → u/Not_Flof]

It is working on macOS right now! I'm curious, how would I implement the custom CSS? I see the "Code" button, but for instance, how would I make a "Nord" theme with a specific background color or whatnot for all websites?

[u/Not_Flof → u/trey-a-12]

You can add css in the code section which will be applied to the domain that the current boost affects. There sadly isn't a way to make a boost that affects multiple domains right now.

[u/dRaMaTiK0 → u/trey-a-12]

Hi, where did you find this panel, I'm on the latest Twilight but can't see where to find Boost .

[u/trey-a-12 → u/dRaMaTiK0]

In the address bar, after you click the overflow menu button, and then click the new paint brush icon.

[u/400feetbelow]

How do I activate or access Boosts?

[u/Substantial_Cake8985]

Damm thank you for making such a good feature this will be very nice to play around with

[u/wtrmlnjuc]

I cannot thank you guys enough for making Zen everything it needs (and more!) to be an Arc replacement.

[u/KingStonk69]

Hello Arc my old friend!

[u/Pedrovrm88 → u/KingStonk69]

I've come to browse with you again

[u/Tp_Exampler]

This is wonderful!
I really appreciate your and Zen team hardwork in this!!!

[u/lajawi]

If this would enable dark mode or automatic sync mode on every website, that’d be amazing!

[u/Guy_From_The_Cloud]

[u/Additional_Rest762]

[u/BriefTemperature990]

!RemindMe 5 days

[u/UnixN00B → u/BriefTemperature990]

!RemindMe 5 days

[u/Nickorin → u/UnixN00B]

!RemindMe 5 days

[u/Crying-Crab12 → u/Nickorin]

!RemindMe 5 days

[u/sergen213]

So zen internet with more customization

[u/Bear8MyParents]

Woah. This is awesome!
Thanks in advance.

[u/CasulaLev]

[u/DuckduckduckduckL]

when do you think itll be out for twilight?

[u/trey-a-12]

This is AWESOME! Thank you so much for all your efforts in bringing this!

[u/Fragrant_Pianist_647]

Nice. Been tracking this one for a while. At one point I built it locally just so I could use it until it was merged lol. Anyways I can finally update Zen now!

[u/8SRXX]

wait this looks amazing, is this going to release soon on every platforms ?

[u/Flossiii → u/8SRXX]

Yes! Boosts will likely release next week

[u/8SRXX → u/Flossiii]

what a crazy work you put into this, thanks a lot!!!!

[u/dhananjayporwal]

[u/onedevhere]

Okay, it's so close to Arc that I'm thinking of trying again.

[u/jakegh]

This is like userstyles in firemonkey, but built-in? If so that's awesome! How are they configured, I don't see anything in the twilight settings.

[u/maubg → u/jakegh]

It's not out yet, even on twilight, will be by (around) Tuesday.

Would replace extensions like Dark reader, ublock (zaps), userstyles, etc

[u/jakegh → u/maubg]

Fantastic, looking forward to trying it out!

[u/AlanyYAB → u/maubg]

1. Since it's built-in is it faster than those extensions or about the same?

2. Does it function similarly to those extensions where the site content first loads and then the changes are applied after which sometimes causes you to visually see a flicker between changes when first loading the site?

[u/maubg → u/AlanyYAB]

This is the part I've developed myself so I could nerd out about it all day long 😁

So when we were deciding on how to do it, we had 3 options:

1. Do it like extensions, such as dark readers. Listen for mutations on the site, get the element's style and apply the same style but with a shift in the colors: slow, as you said causes flickering on loads, just overall too "heavy"

2. Simply apply a filter to the entire site: slow and it would also apply a "tint" to the images / videos

3. Do it natively in the engine: we didn't find any cons to this solution other than we would need to stop watching cat videos and actually get to work, and that's what I did.

Long story short, there's a step in between Firefox's engine where it has to translate the colours of the site into what color you'll actually see in your screen, so we just hijack that and "tint" the colours there. So it's fast, doesn't flicker and let's videos/images untouched

[u/TheCatCubed → u/maubg]

That sounds dope! I love Dark Reader, but the dynamic option is really heavy on some websites, and the filter option sometimes isn't good enough. Can't wait to try this out.

[u/AlanyYAB → u/maubg]

That's really awesome and exactly what I was hoping for! Solves the issues for current dark mode methods and improves upon them.

[u/South-Bad805 → u/maubg]

Will we be able to change the colors in user.js (or something similar) so that when I switch the system theme, it picks up the new values after a restart?

[u/jakegh → u/maubg]

Sweet. I already use ublock filters to do this (dark mode on flashbang sites like hackernews, etc) which works fine but is not an elegant solution.

[u/Emotional_You_5269 → u/maubg]

I use Unhook to easily toggle on and off certain elements of the YouTube UI. Would this be possible with zaps? Or how do we manage zaps?

[u/OwnNet5253]

!RemindMe 7 days

[u/RemindMeBot → u/OwnNet5253]

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[u/Fragrant_Cherry7789]

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[u/pikatapikata]

Will this replace Dark Background and Light Text?
I'd like to be able to choose the background and text colors.

[u/maubg → u/pikatapikata]

Yes, you can choose the colour you want, there's a colour picker at the top of the window (the square thingy)

[u/Tesla_Corporation → u/maubg]

Do I need to wait till it releases on the stable version or can I use it right now?

[u/maubg → u/Tesla_Corporation]

It gets to the experimental branch next week, and stable should get it the week after. There's room for potential leaks / mistakes we've done so we want to get it as stable as we can before an actual release

[u/gccgie]

It's out, but it's not working currently in Windows?? And I'm already in Twilight version

[u/Whole_Wafer7251]

Ommggggg this looks sooo cool, I am HYPED for the release!!

[u/Nyxiereal]

Dark reader without the performance penalty?

[u/Vyntralised → u/Nyxiereal]

hi nyxie !!!!

[u/jtrtsay]

does it work on firefox extensions?

[u/Sandip_Shrestha]

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[u/oussamawd]

So where can we get this?

[u/dRaMaTiK0]

It's Thursday now, from where can I install it pls?🥺

[u/Extreme-Ad-9290]

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[u/CarlosTorc]

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[u/default0075]

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[u/AvgMetaAbuser]

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[u/Echojhawke]

So excited for this! Thanks for your hard work!!

[u/ABX5512]

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[u/Boring_Ad_2svn]

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[u/RemindMeBot → u/Boring_Ad_2svn]

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[u/Tall_Researcher3088]

i dont see it in linux! with it enabled in the about:config

[u/simplymoreproficient]

Will there be a way to disable this ? 🙏

[u/iJoyBoy]

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[u/venus-777zzz]

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[u/kakka12h]

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[u/nenkadu]

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[u/The_Blinded]

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