
Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea? - kdrag0n
https://kevq.uk/is-dark-mode-such-a-good-idea/
======
marcus_holmes
Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual
experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment?

No. No it doesn't.

1\. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their
way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career
is not going to produce good advice for me.

2\. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyeballs.
They're grading experiences on a bell curve and taking the median. We all
experience things differently. This is the "fighter jet seat problem" \- if
you use the average then it fits no-one.

3\. Even if I had average eyeballs (and I probably do), I doubt my situation
is anything like the test subjects in the experiments. My home office isn't
set up that well (I'm working on it).

4\. My research, conducted using my eyeballs in my home office on my
equipment, shows I prefer dark mode. I have tried both, and dark mode was the
more comfortable experience. My experiment beats "multiple studies" _for my
situation_. Yours may be different.

~~~
yiyus
Science is not a faith based system. If you doubt about the rigor of some
study, by all means point the errors you find. In the meantime, I will trust
those scientific studies more than subjective opinions in hackernews comments.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Why not conduct your own experiment, using Science?

1\. Start with a hypothesis, that "dark mode is less comfortable for me than
light mode".

2\. Design an experiment: find the sites that you use most. Use them for 10
minutes each in light mode and dark mode. Write down your impressions.

3\. Build a conclusion: was your hypothesis correct? Was it partially correct
for some sites?

Then you can adapt your behaviour according to your new, Scientifically-proven
knowledge.

Science isn't faith-based, but there are a ton of problems with Academia and
the way Science is practised and published at the moment. Science is also not
connected with Academia - the scientific method doesn't need a university
grant to work. You can literally conduct your own experiment in a couple of
hours (as above) to get better information than any study. Not publishing it
doesn't make it any less scientific.

It makes no sense to me to trust an unknown number of studies over my personal
experience. I prefer dark mode. I'll stick with that. You do you.

~~~
cooper12
Unfortunately your proposed study design does not control for biases. For
example, say I'm an audiophile comparing two audio formats, x and y, and I
hear y is remarkably better. If I compare them side by side, my own brain
might fool me that y is better. The way to control that is to do a blind test,
where I won't know which one is x or y.

Also, asking people their impressions can be helpful in the human aspect of
the research, but quantitatively you need some sort of metric you can evaluate
their experience on. For example, you'd assign a task and see how well people
did comparing the two modes, while also making sure the difference is
statistically significant (meaning it wasn't just as likely to be chance).

This is just the beginning of where good study design starts. You'd also do
things like assigning the modes themselves randomly, so to go back to the
audiophile example, I might notice if it's always x and then y, but not if
it's scrambled. You'd could go further and try to stratify the groups, so for
example making sure one group isn't all elderly people and the other young. It
goes on and on...

So while the scientific method is nice, especially for introducing science in
educational contexts, the methodology and rationale behind research is much
more deliberate and involved. By all means they can try out things themselves,
but no, they will not "get better information than any study".

~~~
marcus_holmes
But that's the point. I don't care about anyone else's preferences. I'm not
trying to find the best option out of the two for anyone else but me. My
biases are the thing I'm trying to measure here :)

------
squarefoot
"Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?"

Yes, it is. One thing is reading a newspaper in which text amounts to a good
percentage of the available area, and the rest _reflects_ ambient light, and a
whole different thing is a screen with some text in the middle and the free
area _emitting_ white light right to my eyes, de facto saturating them.

I would never read a white text on black paper newspaper, neither in the dark
nor in the light, but I surely find dark mode on screens a billion times more
readable than traditional light modes. Useable e-paper displays might change
that one day, but the technology is still in its infancy.

~~~
qwerty456127
I would love to have a good e-paper laptop for coding, reading and
communicating. I actually consider today (and even 5-yr-old) e-paper displays
perfectly usable for all real tasks except watching video and playing realtime
games. Compilers and editors (and web pages) should change to avoid
unnecessary output and require less screen updates though (this would actually
be great anyway - whatever kind of screen I have I prefer unnecessary
presentation dynamicity to be avoided).

~~~
rrrrrrrrrrrryan
I've seen a couple who hacked together setups using Android e-ink tablets, but
I'd love to see someone make (and sell) a product with a little more polish.

The main barrier is that almost all modern GUIs depend on high refresh rates,
but it's not hard to imagine a GUI designed from the ground-up for ePaper.
Little-to-no transitions, pagination instead of scrolling, maybe a customized
version of Firefox with a prominent Readability toggle, etc

~~~
enay
I wouldn't be surprised if the e-ink display market exploded in the near
future with Dasung getting the refresh rate into usable territory and the
availability of color e-ink. I been trying a couple of things to help with eye
fatigue and the following helped me quite a bit: setting up "Breaks For Eyes"
for osx to remind about taking breaks, switching to the light "Brutalist"
theme for emacs and moving most of my longform reading to a Boox e-ink tablet,
though I wish the Android Pocket app would support pagination and there was a
good Reader-mode-by-default browser.

~~~
qwerty456127
> getting the refresh rate into usable territory

Doesn't unnecessary refresh deterioration the e-ink display and diminish its
power efficiency? I really see no reason for the display to refresh until the
actual information you need to view changes. What do you need a higher refresh
rate for? Wobbly window effects, smooth scrolling, verbose build output and
intense action games?

I really don't want the screens to adapt by increasing refresh rates, I want
the software to adapt by ditching scrolling for pagination, giving up
unnecessary visual effects, decreasing verbosity (only displaying what I
really want to see) etc.

~~~
enay
You're right, I really meant latency here.

------
aasasd
Apparently light-on-dark is terrible if the person has astigmatism: the edges
get very blurry and doubled. There was an article on HN about this,
specifically about keynote slides. Also apparently “in Europe and Asia,
astigmatism affects between 30 and 60% of adults” (says Wikipedia).

I have it too, and couldn't figure out in the past why text sometimes looks
horribly blurry and sometimes doesn't. With this knowledge, I realized that
dark background is likely a factor.

So I like dark mode for the OS interface because it gets out of my way then,
and just plain looks better. Same in apps where I click on icons and look at
images, like in image editors. For reading, dark mode is torture—both with
bright white text and low-contrast dark. When sites begin to switch to the
dark mode following the browser, I'll have to disable that in the browser
settings or deal with bright system and app interface.

However, why I _can_ and do code with dark themes is a mystery. I even tried
to bend Emacs to use a light theme for Org-mode and a dark one otherwise (not
much luck, though).

I do wish that screens in the ‘light mode’ were closer to paper in terms of
eye comfort. I had an e-ink device, and it was a godsend, pure bliss—you'd
think that lower contrast would make reading harder but no. Something like
HN's ‘black on a bit grayish with a hint of red’ emulates the experience
somewhat. Just don't make text gray, please.

In related news, I'm irked that I can't have high monitor brightness for
photographic images but lower for swathes of white background under text and
in Jony Ive's bright flat windows. Because, you know, photos don't tend to
have flood-fill of 100% white. Maybe I'll kludge something up for the browser
to amend this.

~~~
powersnail
That's true for me as well. I couldn't read the oven clock (blue on black) at
just 10 feet away. Anything bright on a dark background is just a blurry
radiation pattern.

The reason dark-themed terminal and coding is fine, might be the monospace
fonts. They are square-ish, so there is less need to find the edges
accurately. They are also eligible on very cheap, trashy screens. As a side
effect, code is readable in dark themes even with astigmatism. (No source,
just a wild guess)

~~~
programbreeding
>I couldn't read the oven clock (blue on black) at just 10 feet away

I have good vision: no known issues, regular eye checkups, etc. But I find it
nearly impossible to read most displays that use blue LEDs. If the background
is blue (eg: timex indiglo watch) then it's fine. But blue leds on some of my
home theater equipment drive me insane. Even if it isn't the letters/numbers
themselves and it's just a regular circular power led, I find them really hard
to look at.

~~~
originalbryan2
I first noticed the blue light issue when xmas led lights were put on trees
around the holidays. Blue blurry things. Now my credit union has their sign in
blue and I can’t read it.

10 years later I developed astigmatism in both eyes. Dark mode is really
blurry in some settings.

The blue light thing, as I understand it, is where you first begin to notice
astigmatism. The wavelength is shorter and a very slight astigmatism becomes
more apparent.

------
robotmay
Dark modes are a choice. Light modes are a choice. Everyone is free to choose
what they like, so trying to influence people one way or another, or
criticising their choice, is unproductive.

I live in Wales, a country where our default weather is "meh". I live on the
dark side of a mountain. I work in a room with no external windows. Yes I use
dark modes, and if you used light mode in my office I'd think you were a
fucking nutcase, but I'd leave you to it because that's your choice.

Light mode in my office is painful, dark mode in bright sunshine doesn't work.
Shocker.

The parent article here is actually difficult for me to read; the text appears
to have ghostly halos for me. Perhaps I'm being hypocritical when my own blog
([https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot](https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot)) isn't
much different; although I made a concious effort there to make sure it
inverts easily with iOS dark-mode/Dark Reader etc.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Dark modes are a choice. Light modes are a choice. Everyone is free to
> choose what they like

In the Windows 95 era, we really could just flip a few settings in our OS and
everything[0] would conform to our color and font preferences. Unfortunately
we have no regressed to the point that only two options are offered, and even
then only sometimes.

Hooray for progress.

[0] very nearly everything.

~~~
deckard1
Precisely. And then people defend slow bloated software and systems by
claiming this software is "doing much more today". Yeah, not really. Google
Docs does nothing WordPerfect couldn't do (and much better) back in the '90s.
If you take away collaborative editing (which is janky at best, and surely
could have been done in the '90s if anyone cared) then Google Docs is doing
much much less. Slack is IRC with pictures (which I'm positive existed well
before Slack), and yet consumes gigs of RAM. What the fuck are we doing. IRC
offered way more customization.

Dark mode really gets me though. I've been doing themes on X11 since 1995 at
least. You could even do themes on Windows 3.x. Why is everyone killing so
much time and energy discussing this binary mode "feature" in 2020? It makes
no goddamn sense.

~~~
Shorel
Get Ripcord. The only sane way to use Slack or Discord.

------
mixmastamyk
No one seems to be mentioning the lighting of the room you're in,
inside/outside, or the time of day. Ambient light is one of the primary
factors that make light or dark mode better at a particular moment. See
redshift to make light mode more tolerable at night.

~~~
Scarbutt
I just change the brightness of the monitor twice a day.

~~~
floatrock
...buried 2 or 3 menu layers deep, using a magic sequence of three buttons to
handle all the up-down/left-right multi-level hierarchical menu navigation
complexities.

One of Apple's biggest innovations imho was to make brightness +/\- two of the
default keyboard buttons. Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with
brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.)

TV's should do this too. With smart TV's/rokus/firesticks/whatever, what's the
use of having a channel toggle? Repurpose that for one-button brightness
shifts. I don't need my TV being a spotlight into my face when I turn it on to
watch a movie at night with the lights dimmed.

Dark mode and red shift are helpful, but really this thread nails it... it's
relative contrast that is the big eyestrain contributor. It should be as easy
to change brightness as it is volume.

~~~
redisman
It's insane how monitor software hasn't developed an inch from the 90s. How
hard can it be to have an open API for the basic controls at least so the OS
can adjust them? Everything about my monitor is great - 144hz refresh rate,
great viewing angle and colors - except if I want to change any of the
physical properties (brightness, contrast) I'm clicking around on a variety of
buttons that I can't see like I'm trying to set the clock on my VCR.

~~~
fibonachos
This actually exists, and it’s called DDC/CI:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel)

I only recently learned about it myself while setting up a new monitor and
asking myself wtf is this DDC/CI setting in the menu.

~~~
joelby37
Thanks for the hot tip! I've been struggling with my monitor's menu buttons,
but after reading your comment I found the macOS tool MonitorControl, which
works perfectly.

------
MayorMonty
The most important part is _preference_ IMO. People have the right to choose
which is right for them, and if they determine that dark mode is better for
them (even if they just think it looks better), having a setting in the OS
that cascades down to all applications and websites is just a nice feature to
have.

This is why prefers-color-scheme is the perfect mechanism for this. Simply
swap out your CSS variables and automatically your site is immediately more
accessible to people who prefer dark mode.

~~~
deanclatworthy
Except some people prefer dark UI but light websites. You can't please
everyone. There should be a per-site based setting such as microphone access
etc. where if prefer-color-scheme: dark is detected, user can toggle it should
they choose.

But, as a site owner it's my prerogative on the decisions I make regarding
design. It's not always about choice :)

~~~
yoz-y
I fall in this category. I like light-on-dark background for code and parts
where the text is well-spaced. Mainly because it gives place for more
distinguishable colors. However I hate reading blocks of texts in white-on-
black. I have set Mail to use light background and I wish there was a way to
tell Safari to not communicate a dark preference.

------
dnr
These articles are so bizarre to me: he's writing about dark mode and light
mode as if you can just... _choose_ one or the other and be roughly equally
happy either way? I would never even think to look at "studies" when it's
blindingly obvious: light mode makes my eyes hurt a lot, dark mode is very
comfortable.

The only time I can even consider using light mode is mid-day with plenty of
natural light around. At night when all the lights are dim, even the lowest
brightness on my laptop (which is quite low), plus redshift, plus blue-
blocking glasses, isn't enough to be comfortable in light mode. I use the
"Deluminate" extension for Chrome to make all sites dark, all the time.

Perhaps I'm unusually sensitive to light (I think I am), but based on the
comments here I think I'm far from alone.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
I think this disclaimer at the bottom might explain some of it:

> This post is day 04 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get
> involved, you can get more info from
> [https://100daystooffload.com](https://100daystooffload.com).

I find that the intent behind publishing any piece of content is an incredibly
accurate predictor for its usefulness in my experience. When you can ascertain
that of course. But essentially, my rule of thumb is that if the chain of
events looks like this:

1\. I really want to write a blog post

2\. What should it be about?

then I won't find much useful in it, regardless of the topic. But if it's the
other way around:

1\. I really want to share this idea of mine

2\. What medium should I use to deliver it?

then I often find it useful to me, again regardless of the topic.

Funnily enough, the title of the author's next blog post in this series
captures this idea well: "Writing With SEO In Mind"

~~~
trentdk
I wish this was the top comment; it would save us a lot of debate :).

------
CSSer
They taught us this in advertising. White text scatters over the iris on a
dark background, so it’s harder to read the copy. I’ve even read it in UX
articles. It was amusing to get out of school and into the tech industry to
find dark mode everywhere.

Granted, I use it too. Both my terminal and editor have dark themes. I’m not
really sure why. The terminal isn’t really a big deal to me. I could go either
way there. But I’ve just never found a lighter color theme that wasn’t
offensive in an editor. I always try them for a bit and end up switching back.

~~~
Willamin
For a light color theme with a slightly different take than usual, I would
recommend Flatwhite.

The differentiating idea behind it is that for dark syntax themes, it makes
sense to have the foreground of text be different colors. In contrast, for
light syntax themes, it makes sense to have the background of text be
different colors.

Atom: [https://github.com/biletskyy/flatwhite-
syntax](https://github.com/biletskyy/flatwhite-syntax) Sublime Text 3:
[https://github.com/Willamin/flatwhite](https://github.com/Willamin/flatwhite)

~~~
slenk
Ooo, I like this. This seems like a close-ish replacement in VSCode but the
pic doesn't even exist:
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=esz.them...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=esz.theme-a)

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I don't think VS Code actually supports background color styles for syntax
highlighting.

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3429](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3429)

I ran into this trying to do a Code theme a few months ago. (My favorite light
theme -- and I am mostly a light theme person, as I have never believed dark
mode was a particularly good idea except for terminal windows -- is the
default theme from the all-but-defunct Mac editor Espresso, which used subtle
background coloring in some places.)

------
gnicholas
> _I’ve decided to stop using dark mode across all of my devices, because
> research suggests that going to the dark side ain’t all that._

It makes sense to use research to make a decision that is based on data that
applies equally across a population. But for something that is a personal
preference, it doesn't make as much sense to rely on population-level data. If
you started using dark mode because you liked it, then you shouldn't stop
using it because, on average, the general population performs marginally
better with light mode.

~~~
satya71
Exactly. That's like saying research suggests that the average person fits
best into a medium size T-shirt, so that's best T-shirt for me.

------
falcrist
I know this sounds like a hot-take, but any analysis of "dark mode vs. light
mode" that doesn't account for ambient light is HIGHLY suspect. This is
particularly true if the analysis looks at eye-strain.

I work for a business that does contract work, and I find myself working from
a variety of offices, including one in my apartment. In offices where there's
often a lot of ambient light, dark mode is substantially harder to read due to
the added glare. In offices with low ambient light, light mode becomes more
likely to cause eye-strain. This can be compensated for to a certain degree by
changing the brightness and contrast settings on the monitor, but it's not a
complete panacea.

Of course, the whole discussion goes completely off the rails when you're
talking about anything other than a monitor on a laptop or desktop computer.
This is because different use-cases will dramatically bias the decision of
which theme is best depending on how and where you use the device. For
examples: Dark mode is MUCH harder to read when used with a projector, but it
actually helps extend battery life on my phone. Dark mode is also less jarring
on my smart TV when navigating in and out of videos and movies at night.

IMO, just use what you want to use, and don't worry too much about which theme
saves you a few milliseconds of response time or reduces eye-strain by some
infinitesimal amount. Nobody is going blind because of their choice of theme.
Nobody is suddenly 10% faster at coding. "Dark mode vs. Light mode" is almost
entirely an aesthetic choice.

------
blunte
Anyone presenting (conference/projector) or screen recording for YouTube
absolutely should not use dark mode if they want their content to be visible
to the largest percentage of viewers.

Dark mode is inherently lower contrast, and most displays perform worse on
dark content.

Plus, some of us like to be outside. With bright sunlit ambient light (not
even necessarily direct), dark mode content is practically invisible (just a
black screen).

~~~
mtts
Hahaha ... I teach software development for a living and the first thing we
have to students when they start presenting their work is always “please
switch to light mode”.

------
sildur
> A nice dark screen with light text is easier to read, right? Well, according
> to multiple studies, that’s wrong apparently.

That was really funny. "Do you like chocolate? Well, according to multiple
studies, you don't apparently."

How can a study tell me what is comfortable for me? Are we going crazy? We are
starting to treat studies like little gods which tell us what to do, and
apparently, what to like.

~~~
Veen
> How can a study tell me what is comfortable for me?

Unless you are an emigre from Betelgeuse or a particularly intelligent
octopus, you have eyes that work in the same way as everyone else's eyes. The
biology and physiology of the human eye are well understood. Chocolate is an
excellent comparison. Whether you like chocolate is a matter of taste. But you
don't get to claim that eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is
optimal because you prefer it.

~~~
dkersten
Despite that most of our bodies function more or less the same way, everybody
has completely different tastes and preferences in many different things.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
And when you add the human brain into any process you now have something much
more complex and much less understood, with much more room for say, personal
differences.

------
lkesteloot
"Unless you’re using an OLED or AMOLED screen and your dark mode is truly
black – not dark grey, not dark blue, BLACK. There is no difference in power
consumption."

I thought this was a myth. I looked into it last year and found that power
consumption was (roughly) proportional to brightness.

At a meta-level, I'm surprised that something with so factual (and testable)
an answer can still not be settled.

~~~
Izkata
Things have flip-flopped over the years:

CRT - Black didn't light up the pixels (I don't remember the details as to
how), so it did reduce power usage some.

LCD - Had a constant backlight (see sibling comment for details), so there was
little to no difference between black and anything else.

OLED/AMOLED - Black LEDs are actually turned off, instead of displaying a dark
color, so we're back to it saving power - more even than CRTs did.

~~~
jeffbee
> no difference between black and anything else.

Just a detail that isn't quite right in the article: black is actually the
highest power state for LCDs. The backlight draws the same power all the time
(for a given brightness setting) but the pixels draw more power when they are
black.

~~~
jpambrun
Many monitors now have local array dimming to increase contrast. It's probably
fair to assume that dimmed backleds lead to decrease power consumption.

------
amelius
> When I was in the military, a key tactic of camouflage was to never, under
> any circumstances, expose yourself on a hilltop or similar, where your
> silhouette could be easily identified. A dark blob on a light background is
> far easier for the human eye to see, than the reverse.

I hate these obviously one sided arguments. Here they could have said to not
use a flashlight while hiding in the dark. But they tactfully left that out.

~~~
swrobel
Came here to say this and was glad someone beat me to it

------
WarOnPrivacy
>Is Dark Mode Such A Good Idea?

Yes.

>Many people quote light mode as being a contributory factor to eye strain.
Based on the reading I’ve done, this doesn’t appear to be true.

I'll test that now.

\- Blindy migraine mode: Hurts.

\- Dark mode: Doesn't hurt.

\- Different result ever? No.

The above is from the undisputed, worldwide expert on what I feel.

~~~
castorp
I'll test it as well:

\- stupid dark mode: makes me cranky, gives me a headache \- light mode:
relaxed reading, makes me feel comfortable. \- different results ever? No.

the above is from the undisputed, worldwide export on what I feel.

------
taylodl
Yes. I thought Dark Mode was some cool hipster shit until it shipped in iOS. I
enabled it just to see what all the fuss was about. I love it and I'll never
go back. For me the win is noticeably reduced eyestrain.

OTOH I know people who tried it and _hated_ it. Just because _I_ like it
doesn't mean _you_ have to like it. I think it's awesome to have choices.

------
wenc
Part of the reason I like dark mode is because it looks "computery".

I grew with Hercules Monochrome monitors (green on black), and that's always
been a comfortable color scheme for me.

In my Turbo Pascal days, I began to have an affinity for white text over blue
backgrounds.

I believe it was during the days of Windows 3.0 (1990) was when white
backgrounds became the norm, and we've been stuck with that for over 3
decades. Not even the early X Windows programs had white backgrounds -- Mosaic
and Netscape had grey backgrounds and muted chrome.

I think dark backgrounds evoke nostalgia (at least among some of us).

~~~
LVB
I recall Word having a “white text on blue” option for quite a while as
comfort to the millions moving over from WordPerfect. Blue backgrounds and
Borland themes definitely evoke nostalgia.

------
ritchiea
Customize your device for your comfort. Even if there are studies that show on
average humans retain information better reading in light mode. That's merely
the average! Variation is the only certainty in biology. It's good we have
options.

First I found I read my kindle more than physical books even though I prefer
the look and feel of physical books. Then I found I read even more on my ipad
with the kindle app showing white text on a black background.

Find what works for you. Or if you are a UX designer, provide options.

~~~
Barrin92
>Customize your device for your comfort.

I think the better advice is, customize your _environment_ for your comfort.

Often the reason why people use dark mode is that they use their devices in
_badly lit environments_. It's not a good idea to stare into a bright monitor
in a dark room, and the dark mode is arguably the wrong fix for the problem.
Reading in dimly lit rooms is known to cause headaches and eye strain and
should generally be avoided.

If someone really needs to work in a dark environment tools like flux/redshift
are a better solution.

~~~
NoSorryCannot
While true, it'd be nice if they could meet in the middle. Laptops and phones
autodim but I can't say I've seen this on desktop monitors. I see dark mode
(not enough of it though), auto dark mode much more rarely. Lights that
autodim are a thing but not common and usually part of the internet of shit.

I don't really want to customize things multiple times daily. And if I have to
pick, it will be dark, because it's easier on the eyes when the sun goes down
and I dim the lights in anticipation of going to bed.

~~~
erikbye
> Laptops and phones autodim but I can't say I've seen this on desktop
> monitors.

Modern monitors do have this. Not sure for how many years, but the one I'm
currently seated by is 3 years old and has auto dimming.

------
sevencolors
Personally I appreciate the ability to switch color modes.

I've found that when reading articles or text I like dark text on a white
background. So news apps are kept in light mode.

For development i like that darker themes allows me to see the syntax
highlighting better. Plus my partner loves the "rainbow text" and knows when
I'm working "matrix time" :)

~~~
airstrike
> my partner loves the "rainbow text" and knows when I'm working "matrix time"
> :)

I love this. My wife calls it "the black screens"

------
ajbruin
Also from the linked Nielson Norman Group article:

> On the flip side, long-term reading in light mode may be associated with
> myopia.

[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-
mode/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x)

------
jjice
> A better remedy for eye strain would be to enable night light on your
> operating system, which will reduce the your screen’s blue light output.

When I got my current Android phone (a year and a half ago), I was so confused
as to why my screen got a blue hue at night. After finding out what it was, I
figure it would be good to leave on, and I even set it up on my Ubuntu
machine. Holy cow do I depend on it now. If I look at a screen late in the day
without a blue light filter, I notice a serious difference. I don't know if
I've just gotten used to the blue light filter, or if it really is helpful,
but I've become a dedicated fan.

~~~
betenoire
I also have it enabled on my phone and laptops constantly. I also turn down
the brightness quite a bit. It always looks wrong for the first few moments,
and then it looks perfectly normal. Just like wearing tinted glasses.

------
fyfy18
I like dark mode on my phone, because when I want to read at night (i.e. in
bed) even on the lowest settings the screen feels too bright on light mode. On
my computer though I don't really care, I never use it in a completely dark
rom, so at night I just dim the display and have the colour temperature shift.

~~~
gnicholas
Some phones allow you to go darker than the lowest setting using an
accessibility filter. On iOS, you can do this with the Zoom feature (set to 0%
zoom and with a dark filter layered on top). I don't know why they don't just
offer the filter without having to go through the unintuitive Zoom setting,
and I only happened to learn of this feature because I talked to an Apple
employee who works on accessibility.

I now use this as my triple-click functionality since it is more universal
than inverting colors (which can cause issues on some websites, with photos,
etc.).

------
unnouinceput
I'm a light mode user. I don't like dark mode for my work. But I also don't
imposed on anyone. Everybody's free to use what they consider best for their
eyes/work. It's the same as what shortcuts/icons to keep at hand on
desktop/quickLaunch, it's a personal preference.

So when I hear some fanboy about dark mode this and dark mode that I roll my
eyes and try to ignore it until shoves it in my eyes with his "I know better"
attitude. At which point I kindly remind him that I don't go in his house and
rearrange furniture to my liking and better change the subject

------
greggman3
Rather than argue against dark mode because it's bad for your eyes, I'd prefer
to focus on how it's hard to do well with user generated content.

Let's say you users draw diagrams with SVG and the background defaults to
white. You make a dark mode. You can't easily fix the SVG. You can't just set
the background to black. The SVG's dark colors won't be readable. You can't
just set the dark colors to light colors as you have no idea what the diagram
is trying to show. The best you can do is set all images to have a white
background so any image with transparency is shown in the default but then you
end up with large white rectangles on an otherwise dark page which is jarring.

I actually mostly like dark mode. My editors have used dark colors since the
80s. My terminal has been set to a dark color for as long as I can remember on
any OS. But, maybe because of bad color choices, I can't focus on
stackoverflow's dark mode at all. Maybe it's the blue on dark gray they
picked. I don't know what it is but I can't read it.

------
artistsvoid
I switched after years of dark mode as well, just a few days ago. The initial
reason that it is very hard to get a consistent nice dark-mode experience
across applications; think for example pdfs (which look ugly w/ inverted
colors), or screen flickering during load times of programs, non optimized
websites, video content, et cetera.

solarized light, redshift and just turn screen brightness down and it actually
still looks ugly to me, but regarding eye strain, having proper syntax
highlighting, and being less annoyed about the things mentioned above, it is
fine and I might stick to this setup; once you are focusing you don't notice
the ugliness.

[https://i.imgur.com/xakys4y.png](https://i.imgur.com/xakys4y.png)

reminded me of ACME, so I guess rob was just spot on way back
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Acme.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Acme.png)

~~~
artistsvoid
s/ACME/Acme (noprocrast setting hit me, can't edit anymore)

But what what I wanted to say: I changed my i3 colors to solarized light (vim
status bar as well), can have a look here:
[https://i.imgur.com/B4EaE4l.png](https://i.imgur.com/B4EaE4l.png)

------
zzo38computer
I think that they should mostly avoid CSS when needed, and then it should use
the default colours configured by the user. But when they need to specify
colours in their document, then they should specify all of them (specifying
only some colours and not others causes problems) and use the "prefers-color-
scheme" command to implement it. It is then the user's job if they like dark
mode or not. If you do not like dark mode, then do not enable it in your web
browser.

~~~
mjevans
This is a relatively new CSS property I hadn't heard of yet.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)

------
impassionedrule
Even dark grey helps save battery on AMOLED displays: [https://www.xda-
developers.com/amoled-black-vs-gray-dark-mod...](https://www.xda-
developers.com/amoled-black-vs-gray-dark-mode/)

Also, there's been conflicting research if blue light is actually harmful

------
galacticaactual
I’m not a computer algorithm. I like what I like, and dark mode makes me like
being on my computer when I have to be.

------
pfranz
A lot of visual professional apps tend to be color neutral so you don't bias
your work. Whether for trendiness or for functional reasons they also all tend
to use darker colors for their UI. This seems to extend to audio apps, too.
For color-accurate work ambient light is lowered (windows are covered and
walls tend to be painted neutral). Even Photoshop transitioned to a darker-
and-darker UI between CS4-CS6 (~2015).

It's really jarring when spending hours inside these apps and jump to a file
browser or web browser and get blasted with light.

------
rsp1984
I get pretty bad "burn-in" effects after reading text in dark mode and then
looking away from the screen or at a light-mode site. The lines of texts then
form a stripe pattern that's overlaid on everything that I see. Lasts about
1-2 minutes. Needless to say, I avoid dark mode in my job and I loathe
websites that force it on me.

The effect is worse the higher the contrast between dark background and bright
text and the longer I've been reading. Anyone else have this problem?

~~~
rbobby
Exactly the same for me. I find it so uncomfortable that I won't use any
darkmode interface and pretty much always shun darkmode web pages.

My worst experience was with jsFiddle. They switched to darkmode only, which
ended my use of the site for a long time. I just recently found this
GreaseMonkey script [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/403402-jsfiddle-light-
them...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/403402-jsfiddle-light-theme) that
puts jsFiddle back to light mode.

------
ezoe
I don't like Dark Mode. I even set my terminal emulator to white background
with black text.

~~~
madacoo
I'm the same. I think because I'm more concerned about the surrounding
lighting and making sure the brightness of my monitor is appropriate for that.
Once that's done, light mode has greater readability for me than dark mode.

I've tried dark mode a few times in the past because I felt like that's what
you should use to code. But I simply don't like looking directly at bright
text.

------
decafbad
My eyes are too sensitive to light. It really hurts. I have to dim the
monitors light down to zero. Now almost every website on the net show text
with pale-gray color on white background for whatever the sick reason. Some
people must be batshit crazy to make text light-gray and also semi-
transparent. I can't flippin' read. So
[http://darkreader.org](http://darkreader.org) does a great job for me.

------
etiam
Recall "Reading and Myopia: Contrast Polarity Matters"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207577)

 _In myopia the eye grows too long, generating poorly focused retinal images
when people try to look at a distance. Myopia is tightly linked to the
educational status and is on the rise worldwide. It is still not clear which
kind of visual experience stimulates eye growth in children and students when
they study. We propose a new and perhaps unexpected reason. Work in animal
models has shown that selective activation of ON or OFF pathways has also
selective effects on eye growth. This is likely to be true also in humans.
Using custom-developed software to process video frames of the visual
environment in realtime we quantified relative ON and OFF stimulus strengths.
We found that ON and OFF inputs were largely balanced in natural environments.
However, black text on white paper heavily overstimulated retinal OFF
pathways. Conversely, white text on black paper overstimulated ON pathways.
Using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in young human subjects, we found
that the choroid, the heavily perfused layer behind the retina in the eye,
becomes about 16 µm thinner in only one hour when subjects read black text on
white background but about 10 µm thicker when they read white text from black
background. Studies both in animal models and in humans have shown that
thinner choroids are associated with myopia development and thicker choroids
with myopia inhibition. Therefore, reading white text from a black screen or
tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white
background may stimulate myopia._

------
mcv
I'm not really convinced by these arguments. I admit, I'm a light-mode user,
and I was happy with the switch from white (or often amber)-on-black DOS
screens of the 1980s to black-on-white of the XWindows terminal windows of the
1990s, but that doesn't make the argument that black-on-white is always better
true.

Most importantly: paper doesn't emit light. Now that I'm behind a massive QHD
screen, that thing is shining a lot of light in my face. Even more than the
20" Unix Workstations I used in university. I actually like it a bit darker
than all this light. In fact, when a site has a transparent dark layer over
its text because it wants me to respond to a popup first, I often prefer to
read through that darker overlay. Screens are often too bright.

The primary reason I'm using light mode, is that it's the default everywhere
and I'm used to it. Youtube in dark mode is confusing, but Discord in dark
mode is fine. I haven't tried most websites in dark mode.

My phone and my laptop actually do have AMOLED screens, so dark mode would
save power in my case. Just not on the big screen I'm currently using.

------
ceronman
Anecdotally, I've always preferred light mode. Specially for coding. First
thing I do on a fresh OS install is to change the terminal to white background
with black text. I definitely feel more eye strain on dark UIs.

I don't understand those who prefer Dark mode, but hey, if that's what you
like, and it works for you, I'm all for having that choice on every program.
Not all eyes are equal.

Although I read somewhere that weather Dark or Light background is better
depends a lot on your environment. If you are in a very bright environment,
next to big windows or intense artificial light, then Light is better. If you
are in a darker environment then Dark is better. This matches my experience.

What I think it's definitely bad is constantly switching between Dark and
Light. If I do that I get a headache very quickly. This makes Dark specially
bad for me because even if I code in a Dark IDE, if I switch to the browser,
the majority of websites use Light mode. And this switch causes me pain.

------
emmanueloga_
After reading this article from Nielsen about the size of usability studies
[1] their research credibility has gone down for me. According to the article,
no matter the size of a user base:

"... the answer is simple: test 5 users in a usability study. Testing with 5
people lets you find almost as many usability problems as you'd find using
many more test participants."

Oh wait, but my site has millions of users!

"Doesn't matter for the sample size, even if you were doing statistics."

Even if you were doing statistics? What does it even mean lol... it just
sounds to me they want to justify whatever "studies" they've have in their
library. I'd say, unless a Nielsen study is replicated and double checked,
probably (pun intended :-p) their studies shouldn't be taken very seriously.

1: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-
users/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/)

~~~
vidarh
The point the article you're quoting is making is that _if you insist on a
single number_ then 5 is enough _if your question falls in a specific
category_. Namely, for the purpose of finding the number of people needed to
get the biggest payoff in terms of number of usability problems identified.

This being the key point they're making:

> The main argument for small tests is simply return on investment: testing
> costs increase with each additional study participant, yet the number of
> findings quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. There's little
> additional benefit to running more than 5 people through the same study; ROI
> drops like a stone with a bigger N.

This doesn't quantify the scale of the reported problems. It goes into it with
the assumption that you simply want to find as many of the problems with your
site as possible.

> Even if you were doing statistics?

The sentence you quoted regarding this makes the point that the number of
users the site has is not the factor that should drive the size of your panel
(you'll note that elsewhere the article argues that where you need
statistically significant results you need at least 20 users and more if you
need tight confidence intervals). Rather the size of your panel should be
determined by your required confidence intervals, and when identifying
usability issues is your main concern they don't need to be tight.

------
arexxbifs
I prefer light mode, but I get why people like dark. I think the problem with
light mode is that the default approach is black on white. Dark mode almost
always has lower contrast between foreground and background.

Back when users were still allowed to make decisions, I usually changed the
background in Windows text controls from white to a light, warm gray.

------
Chromozon
I remember reading an article years ago which explained that the reason people
get eyestrain from a white background is that the monitor's brightness is set
way too high. With high brightness, the monitor acts as a light shining
directly at you all day. Instead, you want it to be more like paper- low light
emission but still readable due to contrast. At the time, I was using dark
mode heavily, but I was still having bad eye strain. I tried lowering the
brightness of the monitor, and the problem went away. Since then, I've only
used light mode with a low brightness setting of 30 out of 100. I encourage
people to experiment with it. Note, if you are not used to low brightness, the
monitor will look incredibly dim. But your eyes will adjust quickly- mine only
took a few minutes.

------
Finnucane
I don’t like dark mode because of my color blindness. You often get text in
dark colors that are hard to see.

------
derefr
One thing I know is pretty well-researched about light, is that our brains
produce dopamine in response to optic-nerve signals hitting our
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus).
This response is what causes circadian entrainment, but it also just has the
same effect as any other dopaminergic agonism in the brain: increasing
motivational arousal. This is why light-therapy lamps warn you not to use them
for more than 30 minutes at a time: the excess dopamine produced by your SCN
will put you into a state of mania.

Up to a point, people work better with more dopamine in their brains. (Many
people have subclinical/undiagnosed ADHD, and work _especially_ better with
more dopamine in their brains.) One way to make people's brains produce more
dopamine is to make them stare directly into bright light sources. Therefore,
light-mode is very likely to be observed as "more productive" for anyone who's
not already saturating their dopamine receptors by other means (drugs et al.)

\-----

Fun tangent that I like to bring up, because few people seem to have heard of
it:

This dopamine agonism in the SCN also increases muscle tone in muscles with
nerve connections afferent to the SCN, e.g. the orbital muscles of the eye
(chemical "feedback" through the optic nerve, essentially.)

The current hypothesis for the development of myopia (nearsightedness) is that
the eye's orbital muscles must receive a certain amount of dopamine during the
development/growth of the skull to keep the eye pressed into the right shape
relative to the ocular orbit. In people who don't get enough bright-light
exposure to consistently trigger dopamine release from the SCN, their orbital
muscles remain slack, allowing their eye to "relax" wider into the orbit,
leading to the retina growing into position further away from the cornea, and
thus leading to myopia.

This means that children don't get nearsighted from doing "close work" all
day; but they _do_ become nearsighted from _staying inside_ all day, where
they aren't getting enough SCN stimulation from the lower indoor light levels.
The likely "fix" for the epidemic of nearsightedness is to get kids to do even
sedentary activities outside. (And for people who live in places where it's
cloudy/raining most of the year, to get indoor lighting equivalent in light
output to a light-therapy lamp.)

~~~
htfu
A lot of your points look suspect to me, could you link to some studies? While
light surely ought to affect dopamine levels[0] isn't this in both senses
secondary to - downstream from, the main melatonin/cortisol cycle driving our
circadian rhythms? Your linked wiki article contains zero mentions of
dopamine.

If 30 minute+ light-therapy made you manic so would working a field in summer,
a hundred times over. Outside of drugs and illness there is little one can do
to escape even short-term homeostasis. Nothing is linear and everything has
feedback limiting it.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819153/#!po=50...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819153/#!po=50.0000)

------
Aardwolf
Why is dark mode treated as something new since around a year or so?

Look at 70's terminals and 80's DOS computers. Notice how they are green on
black, light gray on black or amber on black: dark mode.

Look at code editors from the 90s or early 2000s. They allowed choosing color
schemes, many of which were light text on dark background.

Look at websites from the 90s and mid 2000s: there was still some diversity in
design back then, some allowed switching CSS color schemes by the user.

Look at Windows 3.11, Windows 98, XP, etc...: allowed changing all the colors
of everything (no clue how the situation in Windows 10 is).

Android also has been having white text on black in various iterations of
early to recent versions, especially for OLED screens.

Etc...

------
atombender
One annoying thing I've noticed is that a low brightness setting on the iPhone
screen makes a big difference with light vs. dark mode.

For example, at night, sitting in a low-lit living room, I can set the
brightness to 20% and comfortably read articles where the text is black on a
white background. But if I then switch to a "dark mode" app that has white
text on a black/gray background, I need to bump the brightness up to 30-40%
for it to be comfortable.

I'm not sure what the solution is, or even what the "scientific" explanation
is. Isn't the contrast exactly the same?

Surely this is not an uncommon problem?

------
cirno
I am not trying to convince the author of this post, but I'd like to speak to
other web developers here: yes, please offer a dark mode!

When I want to do some light reading in bed at night (I do have a blue light
filter on for that), I will often abandon even trying to read pages with white
backgrounds because it is quite uncomfortable.

I do not care if scientifically I read three words less per minute, this is
about perception. A dark mode option on a site shows me the developer cares to
cover my use case and makes me more likely to go back.

If you need to do a light theme only, then just the HN reddish-tint on the
background helps me a lot.

------
bigtones
This is kinda clickbait - all of the research mentioned was not 'research' at
all - all the articles mentioned by the OP as "studies" (apart from the
battery section) were from NN, or Nielson Norman Group, which were opinion
articles by authors employed at that company lightly referencing a few
studies. It's all highly subjective and opinionated at best, and "ain’t all
that" is about the best we can say on this subject to date. Research doesn't
suggest much at all, except you save battery with dark mode on OLED screens,
that at least is conclusive.

~~~
mattlondon
Or also the British Medical Journal which is not opinions and is widely
respected.

------
tyler109
"Dark Mode" needs to be implemented on the hardware side, not the software
side.

At the end of the day the idea is to minimize brightness to:

-Save energy -Reduce Eye Strain -Reduce blue light emission

However, there is lots of research suggesting, that Dark Mode is more of a
placebo than it actually works. There is already a set of new display
technologies being developed that have the benefits of "Dark Mode" without the
need of extra software, namley E-Paper technology and RLCD. Those are having
several advantages over "old" Display technologies:
[https://imgur.com/a/oPhIu6A](https://imgur.com/a/oPhIu6A)

Dark mode, blue light blocking glasses, etc. are just part of a bigger trend
nameley the shrinking backlight industry in the display industry.

There are some intersting players developing backlight free screens already
and in 5-10 years it will be the standard. Also in terms of screen economics,
not even mentioning the material and energy savings.

The thing is, that our body/eye has been trained for thousands of years to
work with reflective light (to see things/objects through the light reflection
of the sun). The screen trend to look directly into backlight over the past
decades is very unnatural to our body/vision and caused many problems. We need
a screen technology that is very aligned with on how our body is designed and
works.

Big players in the display market are realizing this and building
alternatives. Big players include Sharp, Lenovo, BOE Technologies, JDI, Flex
Lightning, Hisense, ONYX, Dasung etc.

You can read about screen alternatives (like eink and rlcd) here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/h179j5/new_eink_alter...](https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/h179j5/new_eink_alternative_flexs_optional_front_light/)

PS: There was recently aready a Tablet released with the new RLCD screen
technolgoy by BOE-Technologies, check here:
[https://boingboing.net/2020/06/11/tablet-with-high-
refresh-r...](https://boingboing.net/2020/06/11/tablet-with-high-refresh-
rate.html)

------
BurningFrog
We have centuries of printing experience saying black text on white background
is what works best.

~~~
vnorilo
For paper, which absorps light instead of emitting it.

~~~
rhizome31
White paper reflects light.

------
smcleod
Personally I like dark mode for macOS/iOS windows, menus etc... but light mode
inside apps / on websites for reading text such as blogs, ebooks and emails.

~~~
tdsamardzhiev
I also use light mode on a Mac, as I hate the reflections in dark mode. If
there's a nonreflective display though, it's dark mode all the way.

------
rdiddly
Kind of the epitome of bike-sheddding. Way too much importance attached to
this on both sides. Want to do something good for your eyes and battery? Turn
off the computer and go get an outdoor job like forestry. Yeah I didn't think
so. So in that case, my expert advice is for you to use whatever mode you
like, and don't worry about what's best. Not everything can, needs to be, or
even should be, optimized.

~~~
erikbye
> Not everything can, needs to be, or even should be, optimized.

Anything you do for thousands of hours yearly should definitely be optimized.

------
scythe
The blog post links an article by a usability research group:
[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-
mode/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/)

That article mentions a study suggesting that light-mode screen viewing can
contribute to myopia. I was very surprised by this. The study is here:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x)

I also found a few things that make me want to consider the findings
seriously. The authors are well-known; Schaeffer (corresponding) has an
h-index of 50. The study is also cited by a review on myopia from 2019, which
notes (original study is [112]):

>A recent hypothesis is that the problem may be associated with the
predominant use of black text on white background [112]. This hypothesis
proposes that the problem lies in the balance of stimulation of ON and OFF
visual pathways, with natural scenes leading to balanced stimulation, with
black text on white heavily overstimulating OFF pathways. Given that ON-
bipolar pathways stimulate release of dopamine from amacrine cells [113], and
dopamine agonists can inhibit axial elongation in animal models [114, 115],
this is a promising link.

[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-8491-2_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-8491-2_6)

Ironically, I think I'll be switching devices to dark mode a lot more having
found this blog post. But as with any new scientific hypothesis, this one will
probably evolve over the coming years.

------
gfiorav
After all this time, people still don't get we're all different. I have
astigmatism, and therefore struggle more than normal when focussing on low
contrast images.

White over black is terrible contrast. Black over white is the best contrast
(the whole reason it became the norm).

I turn light themes everywhere and the difference to my eyes is tremendous --
especially when leaving screens for the day (no blurry vision).

------
petercooper
I love dark mode for my UI chrome, etc, but hate it for documents and emails.
Sadly having dark mode enabled on my Mac seems to make site designers think I
also want the Web to look like an adult site. I've heard there's a way to
force Chrome to override this feature but I haven't got round to trying it yet
as it's only a handful of sites that do it (so far).

------
alanbernstein
> When I was in the military, a key tactic of camouflage was to never, under
> any circumstances, expose yourself on a hilltop or similar, where your
> silhouette could be easily identified. A dark blob on a light background is
> far easier for the human eye to see, than the reverse.

This is absurd. You know what's EASIEST to see? A shining light bulb against a
background of darkness.

I am skeptical about this suggestion of evolutionary reasons to explain
computer screen settings. Obviously any vision task is influenced by our
evolutionary history, but we did not evolve to read text at all.

Independent of that, there are at least two parameters that I can control,
usually much more easily than light/dark. I can adjust text size, per
application, and I can adjust screen brightness, per machine. These things
allow fine control of 1) ease of reading, 2) total light output. Any study
that considers the binary light/dark setting and ignores anything more fine-
grained is completely missing the point.

------
dkdk8283
I adore dark mode - it’s a must have for me. I’m sure the author is correct
about fatigue but I use dark mode because I like it.

------
danielrpa
If you have eye floaters, dark mode is a life saver. The dark spots from
floaters can be maddening against a white background

~~~
tartoran
If you see the floaters then your screen is way to bright. I see my floaters
only when looking at the sky during the day and I have lots of them. I think
this is because the pupil contracts and the depth of field grows and the
floaters project onto the retina

~~~
danielrpa
I can see mine even on minimum brightness... I just happen to have a couple of
pretty dense, yet small, ones.

~~~
tartoran
It's hard to compare the floaters, I think I have many when I look at a bright
lit sky but you may as well have/see/perceive way more. Gotta add that I am
not wearing any glasses but my eyes (blue) have always been super sensitive to
light, I'm one of those squinter when I forget my sunglasses. I find that
cloudy days affect me as much as sunny days if not even more since the light
is not coming from one direction I could avoid, it seems like it's coming from
everywhere.

------
globular-toast
I've never thought that "dark mode" is better for readability or eye strain.
It only comes down to preference. And it's a bit weird to quote a load of
research to tell people whether or not they prefer one or the other.

The point of research like this is to show what should be the _default_. The
default should definitely still be black on white. Dark mode should only be an
option.

For me dark mode completely misses the point when it comes to eye strain
anyway. For more than ten years now I've been using a low contrast colour
scheme. It happens to be light on dark, but it's far from white on black (it's
called Zenburn). I use this for emacs as well as terminals, which is where 90%
of my work is done. I use "dark mode" plugins for Firefox simply because it
reduces the contrast between the web and my work

------
highmastdon
This is precisely the reason I'm using Flux (or f.lux) DURING THE DAY to
eliminate the amount of blue in the screen.

I'm currently using 4800K. The reason is twofold;

1\. my screen now better blends in into the surrounding light and therefore
feels more natural to look at and

2\. in order to preserve my ability to see blue light. Research has shown
(can't find it now, but it seems reasonable) that when you look too much to
screens, the ability to see blue light becomes less as your brain tries to
compensate for the amount of blue light, in order to give a more natural view
of the screen.

Next to that, I'm putting the brightness of my MacBook and monitor that much
lower, so it's about the same brightness as the surroundings. Meaning,
brighter when I'm outside or the sun shines brightly in my room, darker when
it's darker out- or inside.

------
randormie
I think it also depends on the app.

For example Youtube and Twitch where the main content is in video format, dark
mode is excellent - just like how the lights turn off in theatres.

Now when it comes to typing, in a Markdown app for example, a white background
and black font feels more natural - just like a good old piece of paper.

------
titzer
As someone who has been severely visually impaired (thankfully in my case,
just a mere two weeks of hiding in a pitch black room in searing pain unable
to read at any distance), this is absolutely uninformed nonsense. Dark mode is
literally the only thing that some people can look at.

------
rbrbr
If I am sitting in the dark the contest of a white screen to the light in the
room caused much more eye strain than that of a dark mode screen. Not sure how
the article missed that for me most relevant fact. This is why Apple has a
daytime dependent dark/light mode auto switch.

------
kstenerud
I wonder how much of the HN discussion stems from what time of day people
typically read text on their devices?

I'm one of those morning people, who works best from 5:00 AM to around noon. I
like white backgrounds and black text, with lots of contrast. Anything else is
just harder to read, and contributes to eye strain. These new dark UIs, and
also flat UIs in general are just harder for me to read and harder to identify
and separate the components, so I try to avoid them when I can. The Windows 10
UI is a particularly egregious example. The sun deck on my farm is my ideal
development environment.

However, I can imagine that someone who generally works in a dark environment
would prefer a dark background so as not to blast their eyes with light.

~~~
cosmodisk
>I wonder how much of the HN discussion stems from what time of day people
typically read text on their devices?

It does matter a lot.Entire marketing strategies are based om when is the best
time to post things on SM platforms.

------
itsjloh
I really wish auto dark mode (based on sunset time I believe) worked better on
OSX. On my iPhone it works great and automatically switches to dark mode once
the sun sets. On my MacBook it hardly ever remembers to switch across and I'm
left with it constantly on light.

Really frustrating.

~~~
aledalgrande
Are you on latest Mac OS? You can set it to switch at sunset.

~~~
saagarjha
The implementation that ships with the system is somewhat poor.

~~~
baddox
I think it’s dependent on the app. Lots of third party apps don’t seem to
correctly implement listening for the theme change. In Chrome, for example, I
always have the Dev Tools open in a separate window, and the theme seems to
change while my Mac is awake, but if the theme is supposed to change while my
Mac is asleep, it won’t ever change even after waking the machine up.

~~~
saagarjha
No, this is the system theme. I run additional scripts to keep apps in line
with the system if they need help.

~~~
baddox
Do you mean that your system theme (e.g. the UI of system apps like Finder)
doesn’t switch between light and dark based on the time of day? I haven’t
encountered that problem, I’ve only seen third-party apps not keep their theme
in sync with the system theme.

------
javisantana
Dark mode is very useful for people with "eye problems", for example, eye
floaters are small black points you see all the time, they usually appear with
the age, dark mode make them "disapear" making you brain happier.

Thanks whoever started dark mode trend

~~~
nurettin
I've got floaters, they are never a concern when reading in dark or light mode
until someone reminds me of them.

So byebye anecdotal eye floater guy who supports dark mode.

------
proverbialbunny
>In fact, this very site that you’re on right now automagically flips to dark
mode if you’re that way inclined.

It does not come up that way for me. I'm on OSX with appearance set to dark.
(Firefox 77.0.1)

Is there something I'm doing wrong? YC is a light theme too.

~~~
itsjloh
Kev recently updated his site design and appears to have removed the dark mode
option via CSS.

------
novok
Apple started it to improve battery life for their OLED screen future. Even
today there are a bunch of major apps that haven't implemented dark mode yet.
You have to start early so devs migrate by the time it's majority.

~~~
silon42
OLED probably means I can't use the traditional blue background anymore...

------
Angostura
As someone who worked in the greenscreen era, I’ve always found the obsession
with dark mode a bit weird.

It’s jolly handy if you want to use your screen at night without waking the
wife. Other than that, I don’t find much to recommend it.

------
waffletower
This article is the epitome of faulty generalization. Visual astigmatism is
one of the most common eye conditions. Reducing the quantity of light on the
screen greatly reduces glare and light scatter for those effected. And this is
only one eye condition where illuminated black on white printing is far less
than ideal.

Some readers, particularly those who are older, have a large number of "eye
floaters", fibers that float in the vitreous of the eye. Illuminated black on
white printing exposes these far more readily to the reader, making reading
more challenging and chaotic.

------
Shank
I'm a strong believer in night light / f.lux / color temperature changes, but
dark mode complements it nicely when working at night. Yes, it sucks to work
at night when you need to go to bed. But there is a huge perceptual difference
I can feel between f.lux + dark mode or f.flux without it. Using something
like Dark Reader on Firefox/Chrome, you can achieve Internet-wide dark mode
easily. I think this is ideal if you're in the unfortunate position of needing
it. It may decrease legibility but it beats feeling like having ones retinas
burned out at night.

------
thiagoperes
I have a type of migraine called vestibular migraine and I can confidently say
that using dark mode helps A LOT. I agree with previous comments, dark mode is
not about optimising for the median, it's about giving more options, just like
we did with screen readers, font sizes, etc.

It's one of the sad sides of tech: we have all this knowledge about
accessibility and this is either siloed or just not talked about. Designers
are learning about aesthetics, color theory, typography but not about making
your product support as many humans as possible - which is a business outcome!

------
Animats
At least the dark grey type on a light grey background seems to have gone
away. Mostly. Maybe because if you go too far in that direction, Google's
crawler decides you're keyword-stuffing with invisible text.

------
mistersys
I'd be more interested in a study specifically around coding, as coding in
dark mode is even more popular then general dark mode.

Perhaps it's just the historical nature of coding on older displays that
couldn't render white on black well, however I suspect that has more to do
with syntax highlighting.

Colors show up much better against a black background, which probably helps in
visually recognizing syntax forms via clearer colors. The only time I've used
light mode while coding is when coding outdoors, where dark mode is simply too
dark for the ambient environment.

------
blunte
From the comments here I am amazed that many people don't know about
brightness controls.

We don't listen to our music at 90+% volume always (and then complain that we
need amute mode). That would be absurd since there is a volume control that
can be used to set the sound output to a level that's just enough louder than
the ambient noise level that we can hear as much detail of the music as we
like.

For displays, we have brightness control which serves the same purpose.

With proper brightness adjustment, light mode can and should be very
comfortable and natural in all but extremely dark environments.

------
mouzogu
Something touched on in this article, I suffer from a corneal condition that
makes dark mode unusable for me. I have no trouble reading black text on white
but trying to read white text on black is impossible.

I kind of got a little frustrated by the whole buzz around dark mode
interfaces knowing that I wouldn't get any benefit out of it. I'm also annoyed
by Steam (and others) for not providing a native light mode - it really is an
accessibility issue for some of us.

I hope the hype around dark mode won't lead to neglect or worse a complete
absence (steam) of a light mode.

------
musicale
I have been using dark mode for years, usually green-on-black (though
sometimes amber) for code editing and notes. Not all typefaces look good in
dark mode however.

Maybe I prefer it because of retro-cool-nostalgia, but most of the time it
just feels less stressful.

Dark mode also seems to be superior for phones and smartwatches in dark
environments. One of these days I want to try red-on-black for reading and
writing in a darkened room, as red light seems better for not interfering with
night vision.

------
Lio
The use of the phrase “techbro” immediately makes me sceptical of this
article.

Surely the use of Dark Mode is purely on ascetic grounds.

Is anyone really justifying that choice by claiming it’s “easier to read”?

This reads like a massive straw man argument.

------
tim58
The article talks about eye strain, and states that using the OS's blue light
filter is a better way to reduce eye strain. The blue light filter
significantly reduces the amount of contrast, which makes the screen harder to
use, especially with something like an IDE/Text Editor with many colors of
syntax highlighting. I'd personally like to know if dark mode has less eye
strain than default mode instead of knowing what the absolute best way to
avoid eye strain is.

------
namelosw
Theoretically white on black is harder to recognize than black on white.

When you have the same font weight, the white on black approach tend to make
people feel the stroke looks thinner and more blurry.

If you are curious you can switch to black on white, then adjust the font
weight to the thinnest until you feel it starts to be blurry. When switch back
to white on black it would be more blurry to you.

But anyway it boils down to preference since people can adjust the font to
compensate if it is blurry to them.

------
raz32dust
Digging into the referenced source [1]:

> This result seems to suggest that, even though performance in light mode may
> be better in the short term, there may be a long-term cost associated with
> it.

So, don't start switching all your terminals and IDEs to light mode just yet.
Also, this is just one study. Curious if there are more.

[1] [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-
mode/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/)

------
pdimitar
With a title like that, no productive discussion can be sparkled.

As other posters said and I am just going to repeat: the scientists can pull
as many studies as they like. I find dark mode to be objectively better for
me. It doesn't strain my eyes and is much more readable and quick to consume
the content in 99% of the time -- there are rare exceptions but they are just
that, rare exceptions.

Not sure how useful such an article is. It still reads like an opinion piece.

------
willjp
Personally, I enjoy changing colourschemes based on where I'm working.

Outside on the balcony? Xterm/vim with white background. 11pm in the
livingroom? Xterm/vim with dark background.

I usually have a browser open when I'm coding, so being able to invert the
colours is useful for me. If dark mode isn't dark enough, I wrote a Qt script
to overlay 50% black overtop of all screens. Does anyone do this to preserve
battery life?

------
drjeats
This page did not automatically flip to dark mode on any of the browsers I use
--which all are on dark mode--on my macbook, which is also using dark mode.

------
jasoneckert
There is quite a bit of personal preference in every situation where someone
prefers Dark vs Light Mode.

I prefer Dark Mode for certain tasks and in certain environments (lighting
conditions, etc.), while I prefer Light Mode for other tasks and in other
environments.

Moreover, I've experienced times where both modes have caused fatigue of some
sort.

Thus, I'm skeptical whether an argument can be made for one mode over the
other in all situations.

------
EGreg
Anyone here experience this thing with dark modes that the colors shapes stick
in your eyes afterwards? Try old black-background websites with some neon
color text and tel me how you feel.

For me there is too much risk of that with dark mode. The white background
already gives me all the light I need so my eyes adjust and any colors can be
used.

I would recommend a light gray background for the least strain on the eyes.

------
ngngngng
I prefer dark mode simply because the dirt/dust/fingerprints on my glasses
show more while looking at bright screens. Looking at dark screens I don't
notice my glasses being dirty at all. I find it inconvenient to wash my
glasses more than once a day, and because of the terribly uncommon shape of my
eyes, I can't afford contacts even with my vision "insurance".

------
Razengan
Is giving people options such a good idea?

I wish I, as a lazy developer, had to do the least amount of work to make the
most amount of users use my software, the quality of their experience be
darned.

Electron gets me through most of the way. For the rest I have to write
articles to convince people about the unnecessity of anything that makes me do
extra work.

If someone could write a tool to automate such articles that would be great.

------
pacoverdi
Reasons I use dark mode after decades of using light mode:

1\. eye floaters: I keep noticing them with light backgrounds 2\. poor office
environment: with too much sunlight entering the windows, I have to boost
screen brightness, which nukes my retina unless I use dark mode 3\. poor
screen: I have a Samsung UHD screen in which it is almost impossible to lower
the brightness, dark mode is a relief

------
tutfbhuf
From my personal experience dark mode helps my eyes significantly. Without
dark mode I get dry eye symptoms within a few hours regardless of the screen,
but I can watch a dark screen basically forever without any issues. I also use
a slight red shift, the dark reader browser extension, dark terminal, dark vim
theme, dark wallpaper and android 10 in dark mode on OLED.

------
playpause
What a weirdly contentious article. This does not need to be a debate with a
final answer that everyone shares. It’s personal preference.

------
kd0amg
_Many people perceive light mode as the cause of eye strain. But blue light,
among other things, is actually the cause of it most of the time._

That seems like an explanation of why to prefer dark mode over light mode when
those are the choices available. Or are app/web developers making dark mode
versions that actually use bright blue light?

------
rcarmo
This just reminded me that HN doesn’t have a dark mode. Also, bigger fonts
would be nice. I can’t use user scripts or custom CSS on my iPad, and Reader
Mode tends to fail here unless I point it to a meatier comment (it looks for
the biggest blogs of text), so any tweaks towards improved readability here
would be great.

------
radium3d
I prefer dark mode as far as eye strain goes. My goal is to reduce the amount
of light I'm staring at since I stare into a screen for a large portion of my
day. Do take note of you are a designer though that I prefer a gray text black
background. White text on black is too much contrast in most cases for me.

------
hkon
I use dark mode when it's low light in my surroundings and a lighter colored
mode when it's daylight. This is because I find that my monitor reflects more
shine/glare when I have dark mode on in the daytime. And in the evening/night
the white is also too bright, even though I am using f.lux etc.

------
dangus
I don’t need any of the scientific research to choose dark mode, just my own
opinion for my own uses.

I can use my phone in bed at night without the brightness being crazy. Case
closed.

Also, it looks cooler, especially since my phone has an OLED display (which
should also mean lower battery consumption). Case closed even further.

------
huffmsa
> _A dark blob on a light background is easier to see than the reverse_

In the day perhaps. But a guy holding a flashlight at night is pretty damn
visible.

Article doesn't cover it specifically, but I'd be interested to see how people
perceive the ease of dark mode on OLED vs "dark mode" on LED.

------
pier25
I used dark mode for about 8 years and I've gone back to light mode recently.
It looks less cool, but my eye strain is gone and I've been able to go back to
my older glasses.

I'm now almost certain 8-10 daily hours of reading code in dark mode
contributed negatively to my vision.

------
zwq
This discussion looks like a harmless discussion about preference. But when it
comes to a situation where you are deprived of natural sunlight because your
co-workers use a dark mode and need the room to be pitch dark - this is when
it becomes very harmful.

------
artur_makly
It works great for our auto-generated visualsitemaps.

When we tried showing our dataViz in light-mode..it failed miserably.

However we may consider adding an *optional light-mode for the rest of the
dashboard screens.

[https://visualsitemaps.com](https://visualsitemaps.com)

------
holbue
Dark Mode is much better for writing code with good quality. As everyone
knows: Light attracts bugs!

(SCNR)

------
agumonkey
I encountered dark modes in old CGI applications, it was the norm and it was
at least a zero cost thing. I never regretted the usual win/mac style. I'd bet
a dollar that nobody in the media industry had issues with dark mode.

------
hedora
Why must all sites be gray on gray?

There is a perfectly good brightness slider on my phone. If the white text is
too bright, I can adjust it.

Also, I paid extra for a monitor / phone with a decent contrast ratio. Why
won’t the internet let me have nice things?

------
ZoomZoomZoom
Is there a free, preferably open source, reader web app with dark mode? I have
an old Lumia lying around which is mostly useless by now but has a nice low-
brightness screen.

BTW, other ideas are welcomed. Hate abandoning perfectly functional tech.

------
murermader
It's not like you can use both. If the surrounding is dark, obviously a dark
theme will be much nicer and better on the eyes. If it is noon and you are in
a brightly lit room, a light theme will obviously work very well.

------
bgeeek
Maybe, maybe not. The thing that I prefer is choice, let people decide for
themselves.

I prefer the option of having dark/dim modes when I have a migraine (yes, I
shouldn't be using a computer then but sometimes you need to).

------
chadlavi
I don't use dark mode because of any of these specious reasons; I just like
the way it looks. I think probably a lot of other people choose it for the
same reason. It's not that big a deal.

------
_emacsomancer_
I can certainly believe that lots of 'dark modes' are not well implemented and
could lead to eye strain &c. I'm not sure that this demonstrates that dark
mode is a bad idea in general.

------
vikin9
I skip reading articles with white background when in bed, because the screen
light is too bright even at the lowest screen brightness setting. Fortunately
HN client can display comments white on dark :)

------
dan_can_code
> because research suggests that going to the dark side ain’t all that.

So what? It's personal preference. A few studies aren't going to affect how
most people rationalise it to themselves, because, who cares?

------
pmlnr
YES. Dark mode is a great idea: it provides a choice. Studies are always "this
is true for X amount out of 100%", and X is never 100%, so there are people
who prefer dark mode. Me included.

------
upofadown
Dark mode is certainly better if you have haze problems (e.g. cataracts). The
last thing you want in that case is a lot of extra light around to be diffused
all over the stuff you are trying to see.

------
bokbok8379
I prefer light mode, therefore let's remove the option to choose dark mode
from everywhere because only my opinion matters. Here's some scientific
studies that back up my opinion.

------
giggly_gopher
I used to use dark mode, but now I just turn down the total brightness of my
screen and I like it much more. I think people are confusing eye strain for
staring at a bright light all day.

------
gymshoes
I just use the mode that works better in different applications.

I prefer sepia background for reader mode and ebooks. Night themes always for
text editors.

It also matters a lot on when the room is brightly lit or not.

------
rkagerer
I've found green on black easiest on the eyes, like the original computer
monitors. I set up my eBook reader that way. The green is fairly dark (I read
before bed at night).

------
chewbacha
One thing not noted or studied is the impact on using your phone in bed next
to your partner.

Light mode lights up the bedroom and disturbs my partner while dark mode does
not.

------
somerandomness
On OLED screens, black pixels may actually be off, potentially reducing total
light exposure significantly. Any studies about whether that’s good for you?

------
dboreham
I'm so old that light mode seems like the new thing.

------
NullPrefix
>this very site that you’re on right now automagically flips to dark mode

Maybe only if you mess with your about:config, haven't found a way to enable
that in GUI.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
Doesn’t it just use CSS queries? My browser automatically converts supported
sites to dark at evening, incl my own.

------
crazygringo
There are mainly _three_ relevant, scientific facts that has to do with light
mode and dark mode.

1) That points of light spread in your retina, while "points of dark" (absence
of light) do not.

For this reason, light text on a dark background (dark mode) "bleeds" in your
retina, which depending on your vision, becomes blurry and less in-focus, and
letterforms begin to run into and merge with each other. This decreases
legibility. Squinting reduces the amount of light, and is a common response to
increase focus. Squinting is a cause of eyestrain. Turning down the brightness
helps but may cause the text to be too dim, by the point where bleed is
insignificant.

Dark text on a light background (light mode), on the other hand, has
surrounding light bleed into it. This reduces contrast a little bit, but
because modern screens already have so much contrast (and black-on-white is
usually too high contrast anyways), but legibility remains ideal and there's
no eyestrain due to focus problems.

2) That for dark text on a light background (light mode), an _overly bright_
screen relative to the surroundings may cause eyestrain, as you squint to
compensate. The maximum brightness on your screen is often too bright unless
you're in a super sunny room. To correct this, hold a piece of white office
paper next to your screen, and reduce brightness until the screen matches. (If
you're watching movies or something, however, you'll probably want maximum
brightness.)

3) That lots of light, apparently blue light, before bedtime, can work against
you falling asleep.

What's this all add up to?

Well, if you're young with amazing eyesight, you might be able to do whatever
you want, but you'll have an easier time if you don't keep things at maximum
brightness when working, no matter which mode you're using.

And if it's close to bed then either f.lux or Night Shift are a good idea,
with a dim screen if using light mode, or a not-too-bright screen if using
dark mode.

But that for normal work during the day, if you have fairly average or worse
vision? Light mode absolutely wins the day in terms of eyestrain and
legibility, as long as your screen is kept to the brightness of a white piece
of paper, and not more.

But if you just like the aesthetics of dark mode and you don't get eyestrain
or headaches from any squinting? Then go ahead. There doesn't seem to be any
evidence that long-term squinting causes any long-term vision deterioration.
But as you get older, you may find yourself needing to switch back to light
mode one day.

------
ozim
Great we are having some one off hunter/gatherer anecdotes. When I work with
computer I am not looking at the hills to find some moving spot.

Here is one from me:

I am focusing my sight like I would be trying to pick berries in the forest.
While between trees it is dark and berries are dark, as gatherers we were
collecting berries, we should read black text on dark background.

Large white screens are overwhelming for me. For me it is better to have dark
screen and bright spots to focus on. It helps with development to focus on
specific lines instead of trying to get whole screen at once.

------
mamon
Isn’t the dark mode something invented primarily as energy saving feature for
OLED screens? I never even considered it to be protective for eyes.

------
docuru
> When I was in the military, a key tactic of camouflage was to never, under
> any circumstances, expose yourself on a hilltop or similar, where your
> silhouette could be easily identified. A dark blob on a light background is
> far easier for the human eye to see, than the reverse.

I don’t think this is a good example. He is missing one important factor,
which is lighting.

There is a back-light on screen, which make light colors pop out of the dark
background.

While at night, since it’s in a low-light environment, our eyes can’t really
see the colors.

I’m done reading!

~~~
docuru
P/s: If the writer compare light mode as a dark blob on a light background,
dark mode should be showing a phone with light screen at night. It is pretty
easy to see too

------
teekert
Well, I like Dark Mode on all the things. But there is no arguing that more
light make my pupils contract and there for there is more depth of focus (like
high F number in photography) and things are easier to read with a variety of
eye deviations.

My wife always puts our TV in a very dim setting and complains about headache
when I set it to max brightness. But I really get tired after watching a dim
screen for 10+ min. I have aspherical lenses (different spherical radius in x
vs y direction), not sure what the correct term is.

------
csteubs
Weren't the origins of dark mode (not Amdek origins but mid-2000's) in all
those browser extensions that displayed energy savings?

------
c3534l
A great deal of people prefer dark mode. The number of people with this strong
preference seems like it should be enough. I don't trust the studies cited
here one bit: I remember when everyone was citing studies that said sans serif
fonts were hard to read. Yeah, people find it hard to read when you change how
they're used to reading. As if using a modern website consists of attentively
reading large volumes of text serially. Even if it were true, who cares?
People like it, let them enjoy it.

------
somehnguy
Thats cool and all but the website hijacks my scrolling and makes it horrible
to read. Thats way worse than dark or light mode.

------
castorp
I absolutely hate dark mode.

I even had to install a Firefox plugin to disable dark colors, to make website
that use it readable again.

------
ChrisRR
As a person with 2 astigmatisms in different directions which smear white
light, i thoroughly appreciate dark mode

------
Grue3
I think there were studies that black text on yellow background is the easiest
to read. Yellow Mode when?

------
werber
I have been a die dark mode user till trying Facebook’s version. I have such a
hard time finding anything

------
acd
I think it’s a matter of personal preference. Though I wish most apps would
use light mode by default.

------
badrabbit
I am not motivated by eye health or other health reasons. I just
like/experience darkmode better.

------
Ginrenn
I personally don't prefer it, but the significant battery life increase makes
it worth it.

------
nikkwong
I thought this article was going to point out that something had been
discovered that challenged our belief about the way light influences our own
circadian rhythm—nope! Dark mode for me is imperative, since I use my devices
at night, and want my body to stay aligned to it's internal biological clock
as closely as possible. Pretty significant omission.

------
aaron695
Not a lot of evidence behind f.lux either, but everyone just took it on which
is interesting.

------
holstvoogd
How about this: we don't argue about what is better, but let ppl do what they
want? :)

------
edwinyzh
Not sure why, my eyes have never been able to bear with the dark modes on all
software...

------
theprotocol
Dark mode has somehow reached meme status on the Internet, not unlike bacon,
in that everyone now essentially either "f'ing loves" it or is (jokingly)
deemed an untermensch.

Personally, I was never into dark mode so this article feels vindicating; nor
bacon, for that matter. I think I just committed several incidents of
e-blasphemy.

------
rooam-dev
I don't know, I guess it depends. I tried recently to switch to gruvbox dark,
solarized dark and so other popular themes. It is difficult for me to use them
in the day. Gave up after couple of days, switched back to intellij light +
redshift app.

Late nights i just reduce the overall screen brightness.

------
alfiedotwtf
> Techbros everywhere

My migraines and headaches from light sensitivity tell me you’re wrong

------
zachrip
Dark mode is an accessibility feature that people happen to enjoy, I need it.

------
_curious_
Had to stop reading when the author used the word "techbros"

------
buboard
the thing that that matters in the end is the speed of reading. Interestingly,
i can't find a recent legibility study. The one from 2002 suggests small
Verdana or largel Arial font.

------
happppy
Yes, it is. I like dark mode because it doesn't hurt my eyes.

------
limomium
Here's an aspect of this I never see mentioned: DARK MODE SAVES BATTERY on
mobile devices.

The screen uses energy to emit light. The less light it has to emit, the less
energy it needs. The longer your battery lasts.

~~~
ketzu
It's not only mentioned quite often, it is especially in the article. They
argue that dark mode only saves battery if:

* Dark mode is truly black (not dark grey) and

* You use OLED or AMOLED screens.

But when that's the case it can save up to 41% of energy. They then argue,
that if dark mode were to be a health detriment, that would be more important
than battery charge.

(Note: That's what they argue. There are results that show that power
consumtion scales mostly linearly with output brightness. Which would
contradict the results in the article.)

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imchillyb
I only use dark mode.

Been doing this for years and I wouldn’t go back.

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eilgin
Yes, it is. it's that simple and my eyes approve.

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bxrxdx
Its ok to use dark mode just because you like it.

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seph-reed
Are you in a light room or a dark room?

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s_y_n_t_a_x
1\. Use dark mode

2\. Filter blue light

3\. Have ambient lighting

4\. Your retinas will thank you

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koiz
Yes its a great idea... what the hell!

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ChrisMarshallNY
I don't use it in my development environment. I tried it for a while, but
didn't like it. Totally unscientific, visceral reaction, but there you go.

My preference is dark text on a parchment (off-white) background. Sort of like
HN.

I've "trained" myself to weather uncomfortable stuff many times (for example,
the keyboard that I'm using to write this very post is new, and I keep hitting
wrong keys. That will stop, soon), so it wasn't just "old boomer no likee
dark."

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cyberjunkie
I'm squinting as I read this.

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plastman
yes. too much bright hurts my eyes. dark is comfortable to look at

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realangelbaby95
Were you mommy arron

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realangelbaby95
It. Ant yours

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slowhadoken
Y E S

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BruceOxenford
I love dark mode

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zeofig
It looks cool and makes me feel like a hacker. I mean, just look at it. It
looks fucking cool. You can't deny it.

~~~
Pinus
For me, dark mode is what you used on old 50 Hz CRT:s, where a light
background would flicker so horribly that it drove you crazy in five minutes.
If you had the luxury of professional kit, you used black-on-white.

