I developed eye floaters in one of my eyes and that made Light Mode almost unbearable to use. Some people might not like Dark Mode, but it's also an accessibility feature that helps not only people with certain common eye conditions, but others like migraine sufferers.
I say this with no ill intent, but if a simple white screen is "physically painful", it's clear that the screen brightness hasn't been changed. It may even still be in the store demo mode, which is going to be even worse.
Surely this isn't a highly subjective topic that is going to result in people hugely advocating for one or the other purely based on their own anecdotes. Right?
Putting the sarcasm aside, my personal experience with dark mode is that I do find it more pleasant in general to work with. However, in a lot of cases it does make reading text more difficult which mostly seems to come down to the wrong contrast ratios being used between the text and background.
Which brings me on a bit of a tangent, I feel like the web in general has gotten less readable. But this is more to do with font choices, line length and a whole host of other things independent of the dark/light mode.
>I feel like the web in general has gotten less readable. But this is more to do with font choices, line length and a whole host of other things independent of the dark/light mode.
A few years ago I unticked the setting in Firefox that said "Allow websites to choose their own fonts instead of the ones above" and never looked back.
It's absolutely fantastic how every site now has the same font of my own choosing, it's so legible and clear. Very occasionally a site breaks because it uses icon fonts or they've made their design absolutely pixel perfect, but that's a trade-off I can deal with.
>Surely this isn't a highly subjective topic that is going to result in people hugely advocating for one or the other purely based on their own anecdotes. Right?
No, it's not. Eye physiology is not a la cart.
Individual preference and placebo effects can be, sure. But whether it's good or bad for your eyes is not subjective. Big Mac combos are "subjective" too when it comes to taste, but not subjective when they are compared to a healthy balanced meal.
It kind of is though. I generally prefer dark mode but when there's enough ambient light, I can deal with light mode just fine.
When I'm in a darker environment, light mode (even at very low brightness) is too bright, to the point where sometimes I can't even look at the screen.
A screen that I can't look at is, by definition, less readable than one that I can.
The point though is that while one might "love it" and dark mode might feel like "laser into the eyes" to them, it can also mean reduced eyesight and increased vision problems mid/long term - not "subjectively", but objectively.
To make an analogy, excercize also feels like an exhausting experience for many people, and they "love" and prefer lounging on a couch, but long term they'd live more and be healthier if they did it more of the former and less of the latter.
> it can also mean reduced eyesight and increased vision problems mid/long term
[Citation needed]
The article mentions several studies, including short-term discomfort from digital eye strain associated with excessive screen use (regardless of color theme) and improved reading accuracy with light themes, but I don't see anything associating dark themes with long-term vision issues.
I love it so much that I've been using it since my Atari 600 XL and Commodore 64 days.
At times it's been complicated: I remember the early IntelliJ IDEs had no dark-mode but you could configure one yourself (and it was lots of work). Or Windows: the rare time when I worked on Windows I couldn't get a dark mode to work but I remember I could "dim" the laser white background into a light grey and Word would show a slightly grey background.
Linux / Emacs: zero issue configuring these with dark modes of course.
As an anecdote at 51 y/o I need, at long last, to go see an ophthalmologist to measure my now failing eyes.
But spending most of my life from 11 y/o to 51 y/o in front of computer screen, I'd say all these decades without glasses was a good run.
I do design work, in addition to building stuff. I need to see colors "as-is" (to the degree that's ever a thing) fairly often. 5/100 brightness wouldn't be great, and even syntax-highlighting gets murky at low brightness, I'm guessing?
Is there anything visible at that point. There always seems to be someone advocating impractical solutions simply because they believe these solutions work for them personally.
My monitor's absolute lowest brightness is ideal for me in diffuse daylight (normal working conditions) and tolerable (still not too bright) in the evening. It is annoying that they don't go even lower, but it works for me. My phone's brightness slider goes all the way down to a comfortable level for night, at the very lowest setting.
Or you could just use a table lamp, or any other background lighting. Instead of that you will be complaining about pain in your eyes, band aiding it with dark mode and go blind before 40 years old.
Dark mode has basically become unusable for me as I've aged and my vision has gotten worse due to uncorrectable/partially correctable astigmatism. Black text on white-ish backgrounds is far more readable, whereas white text on black background makes each character act like its own little point light and cause all kinds of eye strain
I have the same problem but its not actually the text that matters but the bright background will constrict your pupils, reducing the amount of lens they use, which reduces the distortion. If I'm in a bright room the mode doesn't matter, but if I'm in a dark room I have to blast the background to constrict those pupils to get a clear image.
Dark mode, light mode ... Just switch on the light in the room and stop looking into light source while sitting in the dark. That's why your eyes hurt, when your irises need to constantly expand and contract. Dark mode is reducing amount of light coming through but does not solve the root cause of no background light.
Am I the only one that uses light mode at day and dark mode at night? I see this topic light vs dark so often and wonder why nobody mentions that approach..
I have a shortcut in my vim which just toggles my light/dark themes and I use it regularly.
I thought that’s what everyone did! Apple OSs have a setting to do this at sunset/sunrise or at certain times. I have mine go dark at 10pm and light at 10am.
„which swaps the standard white background for black“
I tried, but I just can’t believe anything written after that statement. The default was white (or green or orange) on black.
All these white backgrounds are fairly new - probably there are more years with white than black backgrounds, but that’s not how my old brain think of time.
> I tried, but I just can’t believe anything written after that statement. The default was white (or green or orange) on black.
The vast majority of the world's population have rarely or never used a monochrome computer screen. Even when they were common, the bulk of what people read, _even people who used such monitors_, was black on white - it was paper.
Screens that put out light, I can't handle light mode. On OLED at least, dark mode means the only light entering my eyes is what I'm trying to see. I read a lot. Heaven help you if your "dark mode" is gray background, chaotic evil. I don't really mind any mode on LCD displays, I just generally dislike LCD displays.
You know what I would love, a high refresh rate, high resolution color e-ink or similar. You couldn't sit in the dark to use it, but it would probably be ideal for everything except watching video.
Dark modes aren't made equal. Some have proper contrast and are generally easier to look at than light modes even in proper background lighting (especially when the light version overuses various shades of gray), some are rather painful to use - and I'm not even speaking about aesthetics.
There are apps and websites where dark mode is a massive win, but when coding with colored syntax, you won't beat light background both on- and off-screen (doesn't mean I don't sometimes end up coding in a dark room using a dark terminal anyway :P)
I certainly agree about dark modes being different. I've used vim with black background and white text (and bright colors in the syntax highlighting) for many years now, but whenever I try dark mode in other editors they are mostly shades of grey and completely unreadable. Do people really use dark grey background with a less dark font?
I use Mixed Mode: white on black for terminals and code editors, black on white for everything else. What I notice is that white backgrounds start to be a problem when ambient light is low, towards evening. I compensate by dimming the screen. Another thing that I notice is that small text is more difficult to read on black backgrounds.
My understanding on this is that you need to combine dark mode with something that cuts blue light to reduce eye strain.
I've been experimenting with "red mode" for reading at night, I.e. filtering all colors except red and black. Works really well especially with an OLED screen.
I don't understand how something that is pleasing to the eye can be bad for it. Dark mode seems to give me less eyestrain. Websites have so much white space that white mode makes my eyes fatigued faster. Just bright LED light.
I always had problems with dark mode and daylight. Also the dark mode is often not very good designed. Lack of contrast is often the case. Apple does a very good Job but others not (i.e. dark design in vs code or win 11)
has there been claims that dark mode are easier on your eyes in any context? I always assumed it to be the case only for low environmental light situations: watching entertainment or coding.
other than this benefit, I use dark mode to save on battery in OLED displays
> The iPhone X was the first Apple phone to launch with an OLED screen.
Funny they almost write this like Apple was pioneering this. The iPhone X was released 8 years after the Samsung Galaxy S, which was the first OLED smartphone.
You didn't include the sentence where they call out Samsung explicitly:
> Until recently, most phones were made with LCD screens. The iPhone X was the first Apple phone to launch with an OLED screen. Other phones with OLED displays include the Samsung Galaxy S10 and the Huawei Mate P30. For these phones, dark mode can offer healthy battery saving capabilities.
I don't read that as acting like Apple pioneered anything, but I do read it as assuming that most consumers choose Apple and therefore the moment that Apple included OLED LCDs were no longer "most phones".
Which, while frustrating to someone like me who is tired of Android always being treated as an off-brand afterthought, is reflective of reality in the US.
Sure, but the choice of then mentioning the Galaxy S10 (2019) next to the iPhone X (2017) seems like a weird choice, when the Galaxy GT-I7500 (2009) as well as Galaxy S1 (2010) already had AMOLED 9-10 years before that.
In the context of the article, the sentence preceding the one quoted above is "Until recently, most phones were made with LCD screens", which I imagine is why it stuck out.
I'm sure there will be disagreement about whether that's sufficient grounds to find it amusing, but at least personally it feels like "recently" is ambiguous enough to be impossible for people to disagree on how accurate it is. Personally, the fact that eight years is around half the time that smart phones have even existed that while saying "most phones didn't have it until recently" might be correct, it certainly feels like it's missing some important context.
Also the next sentence after the Apple sentence mentions the Android phones which have OLED. Apple has 60% share so it makes sense to mention it before androids.
Becomes "first ... phone to launch". People don't instantly recognize brand names as adjectives. Part of our brains drops them as we read. An options for a writer aiming for clarity would be "Apple's first phone to launch with an OLED", but that doesn't place "Apple" beside "first". Leveraging subtext and association makes for better marketing.
