Owl gives every website a dark theme — not a crude gray filter, but a real one, built on the fly from each page's own colors. It is also a home for more Safari extensions: block ads and trackers, float any video in Picture in Picture, and see where a QR code leads before you open it.
DARK MODE — INCLUDED
Owl reads a page's stylesheets and rewrites the colors it finds. Backgrounds go dark, text goes light, and brand colors, logos and photographs stay as their designers intended. Pages are darkened before they paint, so there is no white flash at night, and sites that already have a good dark theme are left alone.
• Brightness, contrast, sepia and grayscale sliders, and four presets
• Your own background and text colors, your own font, faux bold for thin type
• Darken every site, or only the ones you pick
• Always on, following your system appearance, or on a schedule you set
• Toggle the current site from the toolbar, or with a keyboard shortcut on Mac
ADD-ON: OWL SHIELD
An ad, tracker and cookie-notice blocker, built as Safari content blockers.
• Ads, trackers and fingerprinting scripts are stopped before they load, so pages are faster and lighter
• Cookie banners, newsletter pop-ups and notification prompts, gone
• Fifteen block lists, regional ones included, each with its own switch — and you can add your own
• The lists update on their own every few days
• Safari does the blocking itself, so Owl Shield never sees the pages you visit
ADD-ON: OWL PIP
Picture in Picture for the video on a page.
• A button appears on a video when you move over it or touch it: tap it to float the video above your other apps, and again to put it back
• Or press Owl PiP's button in Safari; on the Mac, ⌥⇧P does the same
• While a video floats, skip ten seconds either way and change the speed, from 0.5× to 5×
ADD-ON: WEBQR
Find, check and create QR codes.
• Finds the QR codes on the page you are reading, in images, canvases and backgrounds
• Shows each code's full destination and points out look-alike letters; nothing opens until you tap twice
• Makes a QR code for the page you are on, saved as PNG or SVG
• In the Owl app, scans with the iPhone and iPad camera, and reads codes from screenshots, photos and files
• Optionally checks links against a list of known phishing sites, kept on your device
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No account, no sign-in, no servers of ours. Colors are worked out on your device, Safari applies Owl Shield's rules itself, and Owl PiP looks for videos and nothing else. What you browse, watch and scan never leaves your device. The only downloads are public lists: Owl Shield's block lists, and, if you turn on WebQR's Phishing Check, a list of known phishing sites.
Dark mode comes with the app. Each add-on is a separate one-time in-app purchase that covers your iPhone, iPad and Mac. No subscriptions, no ads.
You turn the extensions on in Safari: on iPhone and iPad from the button at the left end of the address bar ▸ Manage Extensions, on the Mac in Safari ▸ Settings ▸ Extensions. The Help Center in the app shows every step, with a short video.
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