
The Dark Side of Dark Mode - notlukesky
https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/
======
Amorymeltzer
>There’s an obvious caveat to the comment about the human eye preferring dark
objects against a light background. Apart from a few exceptions like fire,
lightning, and bioluminescent fireflies, almost nothing in the natural world
emits light. In our modern world, however, screens do emit light, and quite a
lot of it.

This for me is the crux of dark mode and is where this post falls flat:
devices are just simply a different beast. They aren't newspapers or
photographs, they are lamps with a color profile hotter than the Sun, and we
should treat them differently. That's especially true of mobile devices, where
being used before sunrise/after sunset is typical.

It's not the same, but it reminds me of how we think and talk about color
(additive versus subtractive). Finger painting as a kid you learn that mixing
the three colors — Red, Yellow, and Blue — makes black, but play with a
computer and you'll learn that the three colors — Red, Green, and Blue — make
white. It's a different system because, simply put, it's an entirely different
system.

~~~
asdkhadsj
Agreed. This article is frustrating because, while yes I do in general like
black text on white background, I definitely do not when the background emits
hot white light into my eyes.

Strangely, the same can be true for plain old fashioned paper. The other day I
was outside and had to look at a paper. Plain, white printed paper with black
text. The bright hot sun reflected off of the paper and I couldn't see
anything. A darker shaded advertisement however was easy to read.

So it's all relative. In my case I just prefer not to feel bright light
blinding me, so I spend most of my time in dark mode editors/etc. My biggest
complaint is that websites don't let me choose. I really wish OSs would start
enforcing _full_ dark or light modes as an accessibility feature. As I wright
this, my HN screen is quite bright. I frequently flip between my dark editor
and my bright Slack work screen. Those bright flips kill me.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
A lot of properly old fashioned paper is a very long way from white, and much
more friendly for reading in the sun. Brilliant white bleached paper in even
paperbacks seems quite recent, requiring use of sunglasses. Most of the books
I remember from 70s and 80s - and I still have many - were much lower
contrast, even in expensive hardbacks or heavy glossy art papers.

On desktop I prefer black on white, on phone white on black - but I would
generally prefer tuning both down to lower contrast than either OS or websites
want to let me. On my laptop I have the darkreader addon that lets me turn
contrast down. My phone gets to stick in inverted accessibility mode as a part
measure that is the nearest I can get. :( I've never yet had a smartphone that
let me set display as I'd like - either on Android or Apple.

~~~
vanilla_nut
Has book paper actually tended more white recently than in the past? I have a
lot of older paperbacks that are quite yellow these days, but I always assumed
they started out that same brilliant white and yellowed over the years to
their current state. Interesting to hear that they might have started out more
yellow in the first place!

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Like ajross mentions the cheapest paperbacks started out quite tan or greyish,
had quite a rough texture, then faded to even more yellow quite quickly.

The nicer hardbacks and art stock were often more a milky or creamy white,
occasionally a more neutral hint of grey. Definitely much whiter than
paperbacks, but I think most would be a few steps from the hard brilliant
white most often seen now.

------
nness
Every article like this ignores the fact that Dark Mode is a fantastic
accessibility feature if you have a vision impairment that results in
ghosting/blurring/light-sensitivity. Features like "Dark Mode" are not about
brightness, but contrast.

I'm all for giving people the option. Assuming everyone is able is a crux of
UI/UX design.

~~~
dangerbird2
You mentioning that reminded me that iOS and macOS don't have a high-contrast
mode like what Windows has had literally for decades.

~~~
ilikehurdles
What do you mean by “like what windows has had”? iOS and OS X have an
accessibility setting to increase contrast, but maybe that’s different from
how you expect it to look.

------
zambal
Writing code in a dark mode for as long as I can remember, I thought that I'd
always prefer light text on dark background when reading text on a screen, but
eventually I realized that I prefer dark text on light background for almost
everything, _except_ reading code. I like using syntax highlighting and for me
colorful text on a light background, no matter the quality of the color theme,
is harder to read than the inverse.

~~~
wayoutthere
I do too — probably because most of my early coding was done over telnet / ssh
and those almost always have white on black text.

Agree that colored text contrasts better on a black background too.

~~~
thrower123
The reverse is probably why I have always preferred light-mode color schemes -
I got my start with VB6 and then VC++ 6, where everything was black on white
or black on light grey.

------
YayamiOmate
Dark mode isn't popular because it's hip, but because it's used. Apple follows
tredns here, not set them. The reverse assumption in the article makes me
doubt the rest.

I don't trust results that say black on white put less strain on their
eyesight and general congnitive stress, because I've personally consistently
felt different. At best it depends on surrounding both backgrounds and light
sources.

~~~
liquid9
>Apple follows tredns here, not set them

CD Drives and USB Ports beg to differ

~~~
apetrovic
OP said "here" => "in this case"

------
_bxg1
This is silly. Dark mode isn't about marginal differences in speed-of-visual-
processing. It's about reducing eye _strain_ , which is a different thing. My
eyes physically hurt less when I'm using a dark theme. I really couldn't care
less if my brain takes an extra few milliseconds to process what I'm looking
at.

~~~
ballenf
It's also about information density. The brain can discern so many different
shades of color if they're not all washed out by a blinding white background.
Or any lighter-than-the-text background.

------
douglaswlance
We evolved with dark objects on a light background, therefore dark mode is bad
for your eyes? Wat?

That argument makes no sense. It's like saying we evolved to walk barefoot,
therefore shoes are bad for you.

Just because we evolved a certain way, doesn't mean that's the best way to do
things.

My hypothesis is Dark mode is less light, and less light is better for your
eyes.

But until there are scientific studies on the topic, who knows.

~~~
tigrezno
Shoes are indeed bad for you. They are good for you NOW because all your life
you've been walking on shoes.

If you were walking barefoot all your life, you'd have strong feet, as
evolution wanted.

Low light condition is actually awful for your eyes. I can use drive without
glasses in the morning, but at night I really need them, because our eyes are
designed for day light conditions.

------
titzer
> The human eyes and brain prefer dark-on-light, and reversing that forces
> them to work harder to read text, parse controls, and comprehend what you’re
> seeing.

If you've ever had an eye injury or been visually impaired and had to use a
computer screen, you'll know the author is just plain wrong here. Absolutely
amazing the author cites zero studies dealing with visual impairment.

My anecdote: injured my epithilium in both eyes, almost went blind; looking at
a computer screen produced unbearable pain that was only marginally tolerable
in dark mode. Developed new empathy for visually impaired people.

------
S_A_P
The author lost me as soon as he/she compared dark mode to green screen crt.
Do you really think the green crt was a design decision?? It was the balance
of cost to performance that 1970s tech allowed.

As for the other points, its largely subjective but I have dark mode enabled
in every app that will support it. On windows, I run the experimental build so
I can have more complete dark mode support, and enabled the half baked dark
mode in sql server management studio. All my IDEs are set to dark mode,
because eye strain is a thing and for me at least dark mode is much easier on
the eyes.

~~~
masswerk
As soon as there were raster CRTs, there wasn't much of a technical reason for
light on black. Continuing with this was probably more for tradition and
aesthetical expectations ("the gloom of the monitor" and a certain kind of
heroism, which goes with it).

Personally, I don't think there is an ideal solution to match all scenarios.
There are some applications, where light on black may be superior, and others,
where it's the other way round. Empirically, for content-heavy, lengthy text
we had a few trends for light on black in the past (e.g. "cool web design" in
the late 1990s) and reversed from this soon each time. For an example, I much
prefer reading HN comments as-is as compared to a hypothetical dark mode UI.

~~~
cbm-vic-20
> As soon as there were raster CRTs, there wasn't much of a technical reason
> for light on black.

This isn't entirely true; many CRT-based terminals have phosphors that dim
slowly. If they used a black-on-light color scheme, the letters would be
washed out a for a lot more time than light-on-black. Light-on-black hides
other defects more (like a not-quite-centered horizontal and vertical hold)
and may possibly use less power (since the electron gun is off for more time).

~~~
masswerk
However, this is true for both modes. It's quite possible to imagine a world
in which we had become accustomed to ignoring washed out dark on light, just
like we became to ignore ghost images and trails. (Also, early LCDs were
terrible at this, but somehow acceptable.)

------
Tade0
I used to have perfect vision - I could see an amber LED display the size of
an A3 sheet showing the time from 100m away. And remember preferring dark mode
then.

Now that my vision has somewhat deteriorated with age and I use glasses for
driving during the night, I find dark mode annoying and blurry.

My take is that it boils down to this.

------
1e-9
There is a significant physiological advantage to black text on white
background. A bright background causes your pupil to constrict, which reduces
the active area of your lens focusing light onto your fovea. Using less lens
area reduces the affect of any lens imperfections, which results in a sharper
image. If your lens is nearly perfect, you likely don't notice a difference.
If you have significant imperfections, the difference is probably very
noticeable.

Edit: The effect is similar to a pinhole occluder used by an ophthalmologist
to test your eyes without the affect of refractive errors from imperfections
in your eye lenses. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder)

------
Krasnol
I don't believe the (recent) move in customers for requesting dark mode in
pages, programs and apps allows for that broad statement:

> Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light.

There are obviously quite many humans who don't. Even if it's scientifically
better or god knows what.

I do that. Prefer light-on-dark. Everywhere. I want to paint it black! It's
not a hip, style thing. I'm not hip or stylish. I just hate the white and as a
day moves on, my hate for that becomes greater. And yes I know about the
programs that make your screen brightness lower. I have it on my home PC (and
I don't like the yellowish tone...but it's better than nothing I guess). I
can't have it on my work PC.

~~~
philliphaydon
If I look at a white background I get eye strain and headaches. And if I look
at a co workers screen while standing I can’t read the text. But with dark
background I don’t get eye strain and headaches.

------
vbuwivbiu
first they argue that the MOAD and Xerox' Smalltalk pioneered dark-on-light
after years of the reverse, then they argue that actually it's because vision-
psychology. Well, which is it? Because there's no way the MOAD and Smalltalk
chose dark-on-light because of visual perception research. Smalltalk's choice
was probably motivated by a desire to make the UI look like paper (Xerox being
in the paper business). Same with Apple's original Mac. At the time everyone's
UI was paper so this familiar UI was important to replicate to sell.

It also ignores the fact that we've had light-on-dark mode for ages:
blueprints and microfiche, blackboards and granite tablets

I mean, the Rosetta Stone is light-on-dark

------
_o-O-o_
I especially love the way you can create a dark-mode CSS stylesheet with
something as simple as:

    
    
        @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    
        }

------
ilmiont
Well, it's subjective.

For me personally light interfaces make my eyes hurt.

Dark themes are, for me, without questions MUCH easier on the eyes,
irrespective of what this article claims or the science says.

Dark mode is a choice. You don't have to use it. I really hope the choice is
preserved and extended into as many interfaces as possible.

Just because YOU don't find it easier on the eyes (article author), does not
mean that is true for everyone.

If I was using a light theme in Sublime Text, or Office, or Terminal, I
wouldn't be able to last very long in the workday....

------
tomxor
This is a very narrow argument, it's well know how much eye strain is caused
by staring into a full screen LED all day. A darkmode allows concentration and
focus over longer periods without strain that completely outweigh any reduced
focus due to slightly worse perceived contrast... not to mention how much
better rested you will be after using darkmode before bed.

------
masswerk
Dark mode has certainly a "cool" vibe to it. It reminds me much of when light
text on dark (mostly black) background was the hype for cool internet pages in
the late 1990s. Incidentally, this trend ceased to be much of thing over the
course of a year or so – for some reason.

------
iamzozo
"Attention, Axiom shoppers. Try blue! It's the new red!"

------
saagarjha
Dark Mode looks nice to me at night, but I don’t particularly care for it
during the day. I save myself the hassle by having a Launch Agent
automatically switch between the two around sunset and sunrise.

------
gwking
Personally I find light-on-dark to be much easier on my eyes over the course
of the day, and especially at night. With light-on-dark, I can turn the screen
brightness up higher without it hurting my eyes.

Regarding the "dramatic new look" angle, what I find hilarious about this is
remembering the vaporware that was MacOS Copland. My family had a Centris 610
and a MacUser magazine subscription. I was so eager to get that HiTech dark
mode that I installed Kaleidoscope and Dad was Not Happy.

Apart from the nostalgia of being a kid with a computer customized to the
point of dysfunction, there is a sense in which Mojave is a realization of
Copland's visual ambition, offering an alternative hi tech theme that takes a
step away from the original desktop and paper metaphor.

Interesting article on Kaleidoscope that I found while googling for an example
screenshot: [http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-
kale...](http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-kaleidoscope)

screenshot:
[http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg](http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg)

------
siegecraft
Am I the only one who would prefer to just use f.lux's "Darkroom" mode (red on
black, basically) for coding at night / in the dark? Doesn't kill my night
vision. Of course you have to switch all of your apps out of "Dark Mode" or
you'll just be starting at giant blobs of red.

------
WarOnPrivacy
I'm pretty sure Light Vertigo has never been trendy.

Tons of folks have used Dark Mode browser extensions for years to stave off
the nausea from bright white layouts (and overly-lit rooms!). For us, the
widespread adaptation of Dark Mode has been a God-send. Turning down
brightness and contrast only works so far.

------
kator
I have Dyslexia and have always found light on dark background easier to read.
I used green screens (amber even) and like everyone I went to the “light” side
as GUI’s became a thing. But I always kept my xterm with black backgrounds.

At one point I read an article about dark backgrounds helping dyslexics read
better. I tried it on Kindle and in one year read 6x as many books as the year
before, it was like someone had transformed me with a magic wand, I could read
and enjoy more of what I was reading.

I haven’t figured out a good way to get dark mode on iOS nor css hacks for
dark mode HN. I did find a way to hack dark mode into Slack and Jenkins and
those were amazing changes for me (and quite a few of my team).

I worry that people think Dark Mode is a fad, to me it’s a gift and I hope the
trend continues.

------
pornel
Many of the studies mentioned in the article were made with CRTs. I wonder
whether peculiarities of CRT are to blame for these results. Phosphor has non-
linear response and limits ability to have sharp, thin white-on-black lines.

------
teekert
Dark mode is not only about reading text, it is also about (the interface
around) viewing images or videos. I'll take a performance hit in reading some
numbers on my banking app if it means not being flushed with white light in
between watching images or videos. I haven't tried (extreme and perfect)
adaptive brightness, this may be a solution too. But it should work pretty
close to perfect in a very dimly let room if it is to prevent squeezing eyes
when suddenly being hit by a completely white interface while keeping things
legible.

------
trm42
I really like white-on-black dark modes. They are somehow more pleasing than
the other way round. There's a problem with all dark modes, though. If one is
using laptop running on battery juice and needs to prolong the battery time,
then conserving battery with low screen brightness makes reading the dark
modes really hard. Hence I've ended up using multiple crucial apps like IDEs
with black-on-white themes as they are more readable on dim laptop display.
Annoying but better compromise than writing code without laptop, haha.

~~~
celeritascelery
This is why OLED displays are so nice. They have much better battery life with
a dark background.

------
falcolas
One interesting trend I’ve seen is amongst Keratinous (uneven thinning of the
cornea, causing bubbles) patients: they overwhelmingly prefer light mode on
screens. The reason why is fairly straightforward - the additional light
constricts the pupil, making the text sharper, leading to less eye fatigue.

For this reason, I know a few of us tend to get annoyed when _only_ offered
dark modes (or half-baked light modes - looking at you, Discord).

------
ilovecaching
Based on my research, light on dark is actually better for you when you're
staring at an array of lamps all day. With OLED screens you would also be
saving energy.

The one thing I do agree is that contrast is king. You should also always have
night mode/redshift enabled and choose palettes that use low energy colors to
reduce eye strain.

------
equalunique
In a dark environment, I strongly prefer "dark mode"

In a bright environment, I strongly prefer "light mode"

The author here does have a point, but I'm not advocating for a world where we
choose one over the other in every case. I appreciate designs that support
both, because each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

------
blissofbeing
I used to prefer dark mode because it reduced all white light. But then I
realized that I don't have an issue with white light, just the blue light
spectrum in white light.

I have switched to light mode but with a heavy blue light filter and find it
much better than dark mode on my eyes.

------
sadness2
While I was reading this post, I found the bright background was straining my
eyes, so I turned on my dark-mode browser plugin, and then I found I could
continue reading more comfortably.

------
Funes-
Fully functional e-ink displays with a good refresh rate and color-capable are
the solution: lower power consumption and better for our eyes. I'm looking
forward to that.

~~~
ballenf
The youtube channel Technology Connections and its #2 channel is doing a
series on this right now. The potential is exciting, but the reality of how
little development is going into the area is disappointing.

------
marcus_holmes
> Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light

This is what bugs the ever-living shit out of me about this type of research.

A study may well have been done that shows a majority preference by humans for
dark-on-light.

But unless the study showed that _every_ human studied had that preference, it
_doesn 't mean_ that all humans prefer dark-on-light.

Going from "the bell curve is a bit skewed to dark-on-light" to "vision
research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light, therefore light-on-dark
is bullshit" is the thing that bad science journalism does, and it's a blight
on humanity.

~~~
noxToken
In terms of productivity, I'm probably like the average person. I probably do
better with dark-on-light. I do know with certainty that light is much more
comfortable if it's not fff white. A light grey or a light beige (f6f6ef) is
infinitely more comfortable.

------
tenebrisalietum
Why can't apps properly separate interface from implementation and let people
make the app look however they want? Maybe I don't want dark mode or light
mode. Maybe I want the background bright orange and the text florescent green.
I'm the one using your app on my device, it should look the way I want.

Seriously, why isn't choosing the text and background color of apps and
websites a standard, simple thing?

~~~
zambal
Because just providing config options for text and background wouldn't be
enough. Most apps use more colors than just background/foreground, meaning
those other colors should be configurable as well.

Allowing users to configure all colors, would be in conflict with apps that
use colors as part of some brand identity and for apps where this wouldn't be
an issue, I guess most developers decide providing complete customization of
colors is not worth the extra development time.

------
NyashMyash
I have a serious eye pathology and I hate you, guys. Really, dark mode makes
it possible for me to work.

------
ashton314
Most of the comments here seem to be gripes with the article, claims that dark
backgrounds on light-emitting screens are better etc.

I wholeheartedly agree. My first computer was a FreeBSD terminal in my dad’s
office closet. Black screen, white text. Glorious.

Now, can we _please_ get a dark theme for HN?!

------
wh0rth
For me, dark mode is largely a battery-saving measure. Especially with more
OLED screens coming out on mobile devices, you can save a lot of energy by
having some of your pixels completely turned off

