Adobe Acrobat vs Shadow Reader for Dark Mode PDFs
Dark mode isn’t just a trend, it’s a necessity for anyone who spends long hours reading on a screen. Whether you're a student, researcher, or professional, bright white PDFs at night can feel like a literal headache.
For years, Adobe Acrobat has been the default choice for reading and editing PDFs. It’s feature-rich, widely used, and highly compatible. But for users who care more about reading experience than editing contracts, Acrobat can feel bloated and outdated, especially in dark mode.
Enter Shadow Reader - a lightweight, web-based alternative built specifically for comfort, clarity, and focus.
In this post, we’ll compare Shadow Reader and Adobe Acrobat head-to-head, with a specific focus on dark mode reading and the needs of users who highlight, annotate, and actually think through their PDFs.
What is Shadow Reader?
Shadow Reader is a modern PDF reader made for people who read deeply — not just passively view documents. Whether you're reviewing academic papers, philosophy texts, or technical manuals, Shadow Reader is designed to minimize distractions and maximize comprehension.
✅ Strengths
- Dark mode from the ground up: Built-in from the start where the entire UI is designed for night time reading.
- Minimalist UI: Clean, elegant, and focused on reading — not editing.
- Highlighting and side-by-side notes: Perfect for research, active learning, or synthesizing ideas.
- Web-based and cross-platform: Works on any device with a modern browser.
⚠️ Limitations
- No advanced form filling, digital signing, or PDF editing tools.
- Currently supports only PDFs but EPUBs and web articles are on the roadmap
- Still an early-stage product under active development.
What is Adobe Acrobat?
Adobe Acrobat is the long-standing heavyweight in the PDF space. It’s packed with features for editing, signing, reviewing, and securing PDFs, which is why it’s the go-to choice for businesses and official use cases.
But all that power comes at a cost, literally and figuratively.
✅ Strengths
- Comprehensive features: Editing, signing, converting, OCR, and more.
- Enterprise-grade reliability: Trusted by governments, schools, and companies.
- Strong collaboration tools: Comments, stamps, track changes, etc.
⚠️ Limitations
- Heavy UI: Menus, toolbars, and pop-ups can overwhelm the reading experience.
- Dark mode is clunky: Requires manually adjusting color preferences, often leading to jarring contrast or broken layouts.
- Expensive: Subscription-based and not cheap for casual users.
Comparison
| Feature | Adobe Acrobat | Shadow Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Dark Mode | Manual setup that is unintuitive | Toggle a button and switch between light and dark mode seamlessly |
| Readability | Distracting UI but more powerful features | Optimized for long-session comfort |
| Highlighting | Standard highlighting | Clean, fast, intuitive |
| Notes | Sticky notes that can be distracting on the page | Side by side note-taking that can be toggled |
| Annotations | Drawing, stamps, and shapes | Icons like question marks, exclamation points, bookmarks, etc |
| Performance | Can be very slow with large files | Loads large files instantly (<200ms) |
| Platform | Windows, macOS, mobile | Any browser (chrome, safari, opera, brave, etc) |
| Best For | Business, office use, official forms | Research, deep reading, academics |
Dark Mode Comparison
Adobe Acrobat
Dark mode in Acrobat is not truly native, you have to manually adjust color preferences via the accessibility settings, and even then it doesn’t always work well. Images get washed out, contrast can be too harsh or too soft, and the UI remains mostly unchanged.
The result? A visually jarring and often uncomfortable reading experience, especially during long sessions.
To read PDFs in dark mode with Adobe Acrobat, go to preferences > accessibility > and then select the custom colors you want for the background and text.
Shadow Reader
Shadow Reader was designed with dark mode from day one. That means:
- The UI and document viewer blend seamlessly in dark themes.
- Colors and contrast are carefully tuned for night reading.
- Nothing feels inverted, broken, or awkward.
If you're reading at night or doing deep work, Shadow Reader provides a clean, focused, eye-friendly environment that Acrobat simply doesn't.
Annotation, Highlights, and Notes
Adobe Acrobat
Acrobat has a robust set of tools for marking up documents:
- Highlights, comments, and sticky notes
- Drawing tools, stamps, and attachments
- Great for team-based reviews or formal document handling
But for solo readers or students, the UX can feel overkill. The tools are hidden in ribbons, the popups are intrusive, and the interface can get in the way of actual thinking.
Shadow Reader
Shadow Reader focuses on the essentials:
- Intuitive highlighting
- Markers for quickly annotating important points
- Side-by-side notes that don’t distract you from your reading
- A streamlined experience that keeps your attention on the document
It’s not made for corporate workflows — it’s made for learning, research, and writing. If you’re trying to understand, remember, or synthesize what you’re reading, Shadow Reader fits better into that workflow.
Final Thoughts
If you need to edit PDFs, fill out forms, or collaborate on legal documents, Adobe Acrobat is still the standard. It’s powerful and comprehensive — but it wasn’t built for people who just want to read, highlight, and think.
If you’re a student, researcher, professor, or anyone who values comfort, clarity, and cognition, Shadow Reader is a better fit, especially for dark mode reading.