3227: Creation
| Creation |
 Title text: This xkcd.com update introduces a variety of new reading modes which can be activated through the menu. |
| < Previous April Fools' Day comics |
|---|
To experience the interactivity of the web page, visit the original comic!
Explanation
|
This is one of 65 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently in ROBOTIC MODE. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
In this April Fool's Day comic, several new viewing modes have been added to the xkcd website, accessible through a drop-down list beneath the comic. This allows various different viewing experiences for the entire website, including older comics. Some are "normal" viewing modes, like the typical "light" and "dark" modes, but others take such things further and/or in more esoteric ways. This includes an "airplane mode" (see below) that parodies and subverts the normal implementation.
The accompanying comic references one of the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:3), wherein God creates light, only for a person on Earth to immediately request an implementation of dark mode. Dark mode is a feature on many websites and devices, which makes for a less intense viewing experience that is easier on the eyes. It is not usually implemented on planets, although one could argue that night-time is effectively Earth's "dark mode", which could have been created by God as a response to the person). This is a common experience for web and app designers, who spend a lot of time creating something that looks beautiful to them, and in their particular use case, only to find when it is put out into the wild that it doesn't suit the needs of many of their actual users, who don't particularly care about the effort they've put in.
The comic deviates somewhat from traditional Judeo-Christian mythology as in Genesis, where light/darkness were created on the first day, but humans were created on the sixth day - thus, the "dark mode" (night-time) would already have been implemented by the time humans existed. Possibly the person is actually requesting a dark mode that can be toggled at will, rather than one which occurs automatically each day.
Unlike most comics, the title text contains no jokes, but rather explains the update and gives basic instructions.
The comic credits the "Excellent Design Team", consisting of Amber, Benjamin Staffin, and Kevin who helped create the modes.
Table of Modes
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Light Mode | The classic site appearance, with no actual changes applied to the normal 'light'-themed appearance. |
| Lighter Mode | The entire web page is overexposed, making colors wash out and reducing the contrast. |
| Dark Mode | A standard "white content on black background" dark mode. Inverts the comic’s black and white pixels (see umwelt) which makes the content of this particular comic nonsensical. |
| Darkest Mode | Everything on the webpage turns completely black, sans the drop down menu which is merely a dark gray. |
| Blurry Mode | Blurs the entire webpage. |
| Grayscale Mode | Applies a standard grayscale conversion filter to the entire webpage. |
| Greyscale Mode | Like Grayscale Mode, but also changes the spelling of "math" in the slogan at the top of the page to "maths" (as in British English). |
| Dorian Greyscale Mode | Makes the webpage slowly turn grey. This refers to The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the titular character has a portrait that slowly ages and fades out while the character stays young and handsome. Could also be an indirect pun on a Dorian scale / Dorian mode in music. |
| Space Opera Mode | Turns the entire page into a Star Wars-style opening scroll, which loops round until you change the mode. |
| 3D Mode | Makes the comic render in anaglyphic stereoscopy. Randall has used 3D space before for another joke comic. |
| Origami Mode | Rotates and folds various pieces of the webpage, as if it was origami-folded. |
| Ink Mode | Recolors the webpage as if drawn in blue ink. |
| Spring Mode | Gives the comic a simple physics simulation, making it slightly rotate as the page is scrolled. |
| Antipodes Mode | Turns the entire webpage upside down. An antipode is the point on the Earth's surface directly opposite of another, but "The Antipodes" is also term used for Australia and New Zealand by inhabitants of the northern hemisphere. Note: When the comic was first published this was labeled "Southern Hemisphere Mode". |
| Hacker Mode | Recolors the entire webpage in the stereotypical "green on black" hacker color scheme. |
| Screensaver Mode | Makes the comic float around on the webpage, bouncing as it hits the edges. Things bouncing like in the comic make a common screensaver, hence the name. |
| Modem Mode | Slowly reveals the comic top to bottom, as if slowly loading, accompanied with modem static audio playing. |
| Stained Glass Mode | Colors each closed area of the comic in a separate color. The colors vary each time this mode is selected. |
| Airplane Mode | Makes the comic fly around on the page, with a "NYOOM!" written next to it. This is unlike the usual use of "airplane mode" to refer to disabling the cellphone (or all RF) features of a mobile device. |
| Boat Mode | Makes the entire webpage tilt back and forth, emulating the way a boat rolls on the water. (It has been previously used as a reference in the Footnote, which says "Remove your device from airplane mode and set it to Boat Mode). |
Transcript
[Panel 1. Black background with white caption boxes.]
Caption 1: And God said,
Caption 2: "Let there be light,"
[Panel 2. A bright explosion of light from a star in the center.]
Caption: And there was light.
[Panel 3. The star with bright rays of light is shown against the horizon of a planet.]
[Panel 4. The same planet horizon is shown with a clear sky above.]
Caption: God saw that the light was-
Voice from the planet: Can you add support for dark mode?
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did anyone else wait for the screensaver to hit the corner? 216.25.182.141 20:13, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
I can't work out what Modem mode is meant to do... on my machine it just freezes the whole page. 78.213.151.110 20:22, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- It plays the sound of an old-style phone modem, and scrolls the comic into view slowly. It's supposed to represent the early days when downloading an image would take a long time. Barmar (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- can confirm on android firefox it seems to render the page unresponsive to input - Vaedez (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Same here on Desktop Firefox - under "Modem mode", the whole page freezes up and the browser prompts me to close it ("this page is slowing down Firefox", or words to that effect). I wonder if it's a Firefox thing - odd if so, because I imagine Randall of all people would test on browsers other than Chrom* - or some weird side-effect of my ad/popup/script/cookie-blockers. A shame because all the other modes seem to work - "Greyscale mode" is far too subtle, and I'm ashamed to admit I missed the change from "math" to "maths"! - but this is a great April Fools' comic. 50.45.232.78 22:56, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Firefoxer here, and without any particular add-ons that might interact badly with it... It does (seem to) lock up and it does (sometimes... didn't on at least one occasion) prompt Firefox to ask if I want to stop the page. But if I wait long enough it 'wipes off' the last seen comic image, starts to 'scanline' it back (note: not actually accurate to the real days of modems, as you'd probably be loading up images in interlaced mode) and then starts to give a modem-shriek.
- I wonder, without delving into the code used, if it's the method used to 'sleep' (could it be using busy-busy NOP-like code, rather than true sleep-interupts?), or just a slightly different asynchronous script-handling method that Firefox uses instead of other test-platforms. 81.179.199.253 23:46, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Using Firefox (On mac, in Australia, if relevant) and it works fine, but no audio component. 114.198.19.39 08:07, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- For me (in Chrome) it scrolled the whole page in from the bottom, but then kept scrolling so that you got the top of the page appearing beneath the bottom of it - like a TV with vertical hold problems (kids - ask your grandparents). Then changing to other modes it was stuck in that position. However, on subsequent attempts it only scrolled open the comic portion of the page. 82.13.184.33 08:35, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I clicked darker mode and my screen is black and I cant undo it help 207.233.27.2 (talk) 20:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- I assume you mean Darkest Mode, since there's no darker mode. The screen turns black but if you look carefully you can still see the grey of the menu and you can click on it. Also, the menu border continues to appear after you select the choice (at least it does on my Mac). P.S. Don't forget to sign your comment with 4 ~ characters. Barmar (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Modem mode doesn’t work for me what does it do 2A06:5906:1412:4100:352D:1A2:184:5F3 20:29, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Modem mode makes the comic slowly print from above 216.25.182.141 20:34, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
I see the mobile site m.xkcd.com was left out on this change😔 104.28.215.219 20:37, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- I have been viewing via a tablet, though I think I've permwnently set my browsers to not use mobile version sites (they tend to assume viewing everything in portrait, I have found, whereas I almost always browse in landscape, so it gives me badly relocated on-page menu bars, or other wierdnesses).
- Everything seems to work nicely, as I bounced back and forth between modes (and occasionaly went to other comics to see how something like Stained Glass worked with them). Until I tried out the Star Wars scrolling one. Earlier on, I'd checked it out on a desktop, so I left it until one of the last few because it was hardest on the desktop to move on from (unless you used the cursor key, when you'd let the select-drop-down element drift to far 'away' to easily click.
- However, on the tablet, it just goes black, no appearance of the scrolly-scrawled page contents. (No way to use cursors to change the in-focus drop-down element to a neighbour.) Back-paging just takes me back through the various Random-comic pages I'd passed through, then the plain xkcd.com latest-comic default, all completely black, no animation. (Plane/Boat/Spring/Screensave mode dynamics, etc animated/transformed properly in their various ways.) Back-paging to before landing on xkcd.com (the tab I'd set off from) then forward again landed me in the all-black page with no space-sprawl in evidence...
- ...until I turned the tablet sideways (portrait proportions), and there it was. And rotated back to landscape to find it still properly visible, still scrolling away. Also, discovered I could drag (without pinch-dragging, which is zooming) the scrawl back 'towards me' (essentially scrolling down the skewed page, not an interaction that I'd attempted on the desktop computer), so that I could intercept the dropdown box and shift myself onto a different mode again.
- This is on Chrome For Android. I have other tablet browsers handy, but would need to check them properly before committing to their compatabilities or peculiarities. But sort of works, after you get over a funny hurdle (as just described), and perhaps need to have set Desktop Site as default rather than letting your device attempt to automatically use the "m." site version. 82.132.237.40 02:56, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I read “Modern mode” instead of Modem mode and I spent a while making wild theories about what it could be referencing. But I’m also quite sleepy. 146.70.116.107 20:51, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- i also misread it as modern mode, it made everything lag for me, made it feel like a modern website 85.206.187.35 00:57, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I deminified the code if anyone wants it. There are no hidden options or anything like right-click has, but it would be extremely easy to add modes to it. 2601:441:4B7E:7660:0:0:0:AC72 20:59, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
"Modem mode" works for me in Chromium, but not Firefox. Robobun (talk) 21:06, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- For me it's just slow on Firefox. It takes about 5 seconds to clear the comic and start scrolling it back in, and the static doesn't start until it's almost all showing. Barmar (talk) 21:11, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
applies across the whole website? i forsee a preservation effort in the near future to capture What This Was Like, when randall inevitably removes the menu and all its modes--there's no chance this is staying, is there? - Vaedez (talk) 21:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- It applies to older comics, but not other parts of the site. I'm also wondering if this might be just for April Fool's Day. Barmar (talk) 21:27, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- I know it's april the 1st, but could we keep the modes? Stainglass is fun when the background doesn't turn maroon (and makes the text hard to read). I also checked other pages of xkcd, the modes are on on the other comics. 2a04:cec0:121a:5180:bcf7:54ff:feb2:d55 (talk) 21:31, 1 April 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Of course it's the April Fools'/Fools' comic. Nice to see it being on time, this year, and I too wonder how long it'll stay. Might it permanently stay on this comic page, perhaps even stay if you jump off of it, but comic 3228 (or the 'default' latest-comic page) will probably be back to normal on Friday. 81.179.199.253 22:14, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Luckily, preservation is easy enough. I think you just need to save the main Javascript file (which contains the CSS, and generates the necessary DOM on the fly) and the one image asset. I think it should be easy enough to turn it into a UserScript if you turn the png into a data URI, or even a web extension if that's more your speed. Dratini0 (talk) 00:12, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Finally we have the Boat Mode from the footer! B for brain (talk) (youtube channel wobsite (supposed to be a blag)) 21:33, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Attention admins I think there's an "oops" in this line:
To experience the interactivity, visit the {{xkcd|{comicNum}|original comic}}!
64.201.132.210 21:43, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Yeah, looks like this is a regression in this corner case. I should have a fix for it soon. —theusaf (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Has the full footer always been there? "xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing." --Chance2travel (talk) 22:30, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, always has been. Learn more at the page for Footnote. 104.28.215.219 23:17, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
I think the Dorian Greyscale Mode takes 5 minutes to complete. I see this in the Javascript: body.mode-dorian-greyscale {\n transition: filter 300s ease-out; Pgn674 (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Dorian Greyscale Mode seems like it ought to use only the white keys on a standard piano, and go DEGFCDBA, with adjacent notes differing in a single bit position. 2A02:8084:2862:4F80:65B7:327D:E614:342F 22:56, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
I'd love to know if the modem mode's audio file decodes to anything if you try to decode it as a v.92 stream or something similar. 2603:6011:4504:D100:3BD0:B617:9D7:1C80 23:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Stained Glass Mode doesn't show title text? Might be a bug X (talk) 23:38, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Not gonna lie, I got nerd-sniped hard here. I thought the noise in the modem mode might be real modem noises, and I tried to demodulate it. With Gnuradio, I got to the point of guessing that it's 4FSK at 2400 baud, with a center frequency of about 1700 Hz and a frequency deviation of about 300 Hz. I couldn't find the corresponding modem standard, so I started deminifying the source code that generates it. The good news is that I was correct. It's 4FSK, 2400 baud, center frequency 1710 Hz, frequency deviation 270 Hz. The bad news? The data is Math.random(). That feels bittersweet. I saw a puzzle where there was none. I want to post the relevant snippet of deminified code. Am I allowed to do that? Is the site itself also under CC-BY-NC, or just the comics? Dratini0 (talk) 23:58, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Honestly, I'd love a real dark mode for xkcd.com. But one where the comic isn't inverted. Sometimes I prefer to read the comic here on explainxkcd.com since I have mediawiki settings for dark mode, but those don't invert the comic. (I don't think I can make mediawiki settings for space opera mode...) Orion205 (talk) 00:28, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- You should be able to force a custom CSS on this site (with or without any browser-helpers, but there are ones out there that streamline/automate/augment this ability). The AFD-code is applying a full visual filter (over the top of the comic; maybe or maybe not above the mode-selection 'widget', depending upon browser implementation), but sounds like you just want to apply foreground/background inversion as priority (above anything xkcd.com normally 'suggests' via CSS/tag-attributes) to all markup, but leave the comic image (and any other images, like the thumbnails) as is. Might he tricky if any element is "black-on-transparency" image, which assumes white but now has your code turning it black behind the non-transparent black, but you could probably live with it (or make it 75% dark-grey or so?), and non-transparent black-on-white (presuming white all around it) could look strange.
- But you can't tell for sure without trying to tweak your end (or actually checking the source HTML, on the way to doing just that).
- Alternatively, maybe you can isolate the on-site code for just the Dark Mode of the entire-page treatment, modified to 'demask' the filter exactly over the limits of the comic img-rendering area. If it's been done the way I think it's been done (not gonna try to check, 'til I'm not on mobile platform myself) should be a fairly trivial job to add to the fraction of the code you 'borrow'. Or at least a learning experience, as you work out what tweaks do what. 82.132.237.40 12:22, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I spent way too long watching screensaver mode to see if it would do anything if the comic hit a corner. 170.142.177.145 00:31, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- fyi ive found that the comic panels bounce on the edges of the viewport but move with reference to page coordinates--which means if you scroll just right you can place a corner of your screen where it's going to hit, without having to wait for it to get there on its own - Vaedez (talk) 03:39, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I wonder if the choice of the actual text in the comic is a reference to the Apollo 8 Christmas broadcast of Genesis, due to the Artemis II launch today... or maybe I'm overthinking it and it's simply a joke about light and dark mode. 2601:241:8002:3E0:5CAD:3E02:93FF:FB00 01:05, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Anyone test the other April fools comics? Commercialegg (talk) 01:14, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- I tried Machine (2916) in dark mode and it just froze after the tutorial. King Pando (talk) 03:34, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I noticed using some of the modes makes xkcd.com/688 no longer self describing, not sure if its worth noting on either wiki Daunting Zebra (talk) 07:31, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
The current explanation of dark mode as 'inverting black and white pixels' isn't quite correct. For example, on 2623 a pale yellow colour gets flipped to black. On the other hand, other colours elsewhere are left untouched. So it must be doing 'some very light area of colour palette > black' and presumably 'some very dark area of colour palette > white'. 82.13.184.33 11:27, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- On 2342 a light khaki(?) colour gets changed to a dark grey - not even a black. 82.13.184.33 11:29, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- Brown sun, anyone? 2750 82.13.184.33 11:33, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- Similar to the criteria for the Stained Glass region borders, perhaps? Sufficiently light grey (or unssaturated+light colours) do not 'edge' a given floodfill area, it seems. (See xkcd 1811, and how it floods/filters that, for example, with pre-coloured and greyscale text to compare its operational limits upon.) 82.132.237.40 12:22, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
... ... I was hoping this comic would be actually fun, like ALL previous April 1 comics are... :( It would be much better if it follows its name and the standards of earlier April 1's, i.e. there is only a "dark" option and when you switch to it the story progresses and you continue to do some other things and eventually complete a full xkcd-style "creation" (a great idea!) 203.198.86.210 11:43, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
unsigned comment (pretend it's April foooools)
Is nobody noticing the fact that Randall was ACTUALLY ON TIME? That's quite rare! --'DollarStoreBa'alConverse 13:58, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I wonder if any intentional "Easter eggs" were hidden inside other comic pages. Benzaldehyde (talk 17:10, 2 April 2026 (UTC) Add comment
