13 proper dark color schemes for the wp-admin dashboard, the block editor's writing canvas, the Classic Editor, and the Customizer.
Everything included
Mawu plus the Nature and Hero collections, picked from your own profile next to Default and Midnight.
WordPress's dark schemes stop at the toolbar and sidebar. Mawu also darkens the page you write on.
A dark toolbar and writing area for sites still using the Classic Editor.
Each admin picks their own theme. No forced toggle or floating button: it's a real admin color scheme.
An optional dark login screen, with its own theme setting.
The Customizer panel and every section title go dark too.
Each element is recolored individually, like a dark-mode browser extension, so other plugins' screens stay readable too.
No license key or outside service. Everything runs in your own WordPress install.
Set dark hours, like 7pm to 7am, and Mawu switches to a dark theme automatically, then back.
See it in action
13 themes
Mawu is the original. The Nature collection adds five calm, earthy themes, and the Hero collection adds seven bold ones, each built around one signature color. All 13 meet the same WCAG AA contrast standard. See the full theme lineup for details.
Pick one to preview it. These are the plugin's real colors.
The original
The original: a calm, deep night sky.
Nature collection
Moonlight filtered through pine needles, warmed by an amber understory.
Nature collection
Deep-water calm with a bioluminescent flicker at the edges.
Nature collection
Cooling sand after sunset, still glowing faintly terracotta.
Nature collection
Obsidian dark with a live coal still burning underneath.
Nature collection
Undergrowth in shadow, catching one shaft of lime-green light.
Hero collection
A green-black base with a glowing, slightly blue green.
Hero collection
Neutral charcoal with one flash of warm yellow.
Hero collection
Night-sky navy with a hot red accent.
Hero collection
Dark red like cooling metal, with a molten orange.
Hero collection
Near-black with a hint of violet and a bright purple glow.
Hero collection
The warmest base in the set, a deep crimson, with lightning gold.
Hero collection
Deep-sea teal-black with a bright aqua.
Scope, stated plainly
Questions
No. Mawu only affects the wp-admin area (dashboard, editors, login screen) for logged-in users. Your public site is untouched.
Yes — enable "Classic editor" dark mode under Settings → Mawu Dark Mode.
No. Everything runs locally in your browser and your own WordPress install — no external requests, accounts, or license checks. See the full privacy breakdown.
Yes, by design. Each theme is selected per-user from Users → Profile → Admin Color Scheme, exactly like choosing "Midnight" or "Ectoplasm." There's no site-wide override. See the Settings walkthrough for the one place site-wide configuration still applies (the login screen).
Yes. All 13 themes, the block editor canvas, the Classic Editor, the Customizer, and the login screen are included at no cost, with no account or license key required.
Not yet. Mawu currently only affects wp-admin. A frontend light/dark toggle is a planned future addition. See what Mawu does and doesn't cover for the full picture.
Yes. Set your own dark hours on your Profile screen and pick which theme should apply during that window — outside those hours, your normal Admin Color Scheme choice is used exactly as before. See how scheduled dark mode works.
Yes, the "Try it live" demo above runs a real copy of Mawu, with the Mawu theme already active, entirely in your browser via WordPress Playground — no install and no account needed.
From the blog
WordPress core, OS-level forced dark mode, browser extensions, small admin plugins, and frontend tools like Night Eye all get called dark mode, and they solve five distinct problems. Here is what each one actually covers, and where each one stops short.
WordPress's built-in dark color schemes stop at the toolbar and sidebar. The block editor's writing canvas renders in a separate iframe they cannot reach, and the usual fix for that has its own silent failure mode. Here is the real mechanism, and what actually works.
Mawu Dark Mode 0.9.0 adds seven dark themes for the WordPress dashboard, each built around one comic book hero's signature color. Here is where each palette came from, and the contrast rules each one had to pass.
