10 ms·

The Dark Side of Dark Mode

131 points by notlukesky 7y ago

_o-O-o_ 7y ago
I especially love the way you can create a dark-mode CSS stylesheet with something as simple as: @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { }
nness 7y ago
Every article like this ignores the fact that Dark Mode is a fantastic accessibility feature if you have a vision impairment that results in ghosting/blurring/light-sensitivity. Features like "Dark Mode" are not about brightness, but contrast. I'm all for giving people the option. Assuming everyone is able is a crux of UI/UX design.
- vallode 7y ago
  This is a very good point, personally I do not like dark mode (but have used it for many years as a developer, before swapping back). But the OPTION for a user to display a page in dark mode is absolutely not a 'dark side'. Optional settings are the beauty of software, they shouldn't be shunned but encouraged.
  - ChrisSD 7y ago
    The reason options are often shunned is that they exponentially increase the complexity. Every option needs to work with every other combination of options. Testing this can be very time consuming especially if it doesn't lend itself to automation. I'm not arguing against options but I am saying options come with a cost so the benefit has to be deemed to be worth the maintenance burden.
    - vallode 7y ago
      Wholeheartedly agreed! We always need to look at stuff from both angles and I forgot just how complicated adding new features can be (even if they are 'simple' changes, Chaos theory comes into mind.)
- dangerbird2 7y ago
  You mentioning that reminded me that iOS and macOS don't have a high-contrast mode like what Windows has had literally for decades.
  - Amorymeltzer 7y ago
    OSX has an "increase contrast" mode, a contrast slider, and an invert colors option (among others) in the Accessibility preferences, and has for quite some time.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    What do you mean by “like what windows has had”? iOS and OS X have an accessibility setting to increase contrast, but maybe that’s different from how you expect it to look.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Err, both iOS/macOS have extended accessibility features, including high contrast mode and controls.
- dijksterhuis 7y ago
  > Features like "Dark Mode" are not about brightness, but contrast. Exactly. Something that the article doesn’t seem to pick up on is how we read and dark modes effect on that depends on what we’re reading. (The musician example doesn’t quite do it justice). AKAIK We see the shapes of words first, then some of the letters, then we understand the word. Hence why if y-u blank -ut s-me /etters, y-u can sti// read a sentence. I find light on dark easier to navigate with code because the “shapes” are easier to determine. Code is highly structured - even different variable names have different shapes. Having said that... Reading a full on research paper or something has to be dark on light for me. I’m reading something with less structure, where the words are one after the other. So... yeah. It’s context and task dependent. So it’s a good thing there’s a choice.
- ljm 7y ago
  For me it’s also about decluttering the UI (for want of a better term). Dark mode lets the UI get out of the way, especially if the actual workspace or content remains light. The MacOS mail client is a decent enough example - you can have dark UI but still render the email as light on dark.
- SomeHacker44 7y ago
  This is exactly correct. I have an astigmatism which causes chromatic abberation. Specifically, the B in RGB is usually out of focus when the R is in focus, although I can actually force my eyes to focus on the B and cause the opposite to occur. This has been exacerbated by my recent "graduation" to progressive glasses. For whatever reason these seem to cause their own chromatic abberation issues. Dark mode actually makes the fringing a bigger problem, but I configure everything not to use blues significantly and so it overall makes things more readable for me.
  - l_t 7y ago
    You might've looked at this already, but you can use a program called f.lux to globally change the color temperature of your screen. It's intended to eliminate blue light to make it easier to sleep, but it's highly configurable and in your case it might help with readability.
    - pathartl 7y ago
      This basic feature is also in most OS's now labeled as "blue light filter" or "night mode".
    - manifestsilence 7y ago
      f.lux is super helpful. I'd rather look at black text on a configurably-dark red-tinted background than have to invert everything. Especially because I don't only look at a text editor all day. Not every program has dark mode for all its text, and f.lux is a global solution. It's also great that it has a timer built in so you can go darker as evening approaches.
- jaabe 7y ago
  Is it? Because I’m fairly nearsighted and have astigmatism, which can make text on screens very blurry when there is a low contrast, and it’s a lot worse with dark mode. Still, I agree that having both a light and a dark mode is better than having just one of them.
  - binthere 7y ago
    For many users high contrast is enhanced when it's dark. See Windows High Contrast Mode as an example.
Krasnol 7y ago
I don't believe the (recent) move in customers for requesting dark mode in pages, programs and apps allows for that broad statement: > Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light. There are obviously quite many humans who don't. Even if it's scientifically better or god knows what. I do that. Prefer light-on-dark. Everywhere. I want to paint it black! It's not a hip, style thing. I'm not hip or stylish. I just hate the white and as a day moves on, my hate for that becomes greater. And yes I know about the programs that make your screen brightness lower. I have it on my home PC (and I don't like the yellowish tone...but it's better than nothing I guess). I can't have it on my work PC.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  If I look at a white background I get eye strain and headaches. And if I look at a co workers screen while standing I can’t read the text. But with dark background I don’t get eye strain and headaches.
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- thetest3r 7y ago
  I'd suggest trying Dark Reader extension for your browser. It's a life-saver for me.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    Wow thank you. I've been fiddling around with Stylus for the pages I use regularly but this is a simpler solution for them all.
- Moru 7y ago
  I always hated the bright background on computers. The green or amber old PC screens were better. The first program for inverting the colors I wrote on my first homecomputer, Atari ST. Since then I always look for something handy to switch to dark mode on my computers, even if they don't have a built in way of doing it. The one I'm using now is f.lux, working good enough for me. I can let it run normal colors when I start up some art program so I get correct colors and automatically switch back to red when I go to the darkmode editor. I also make sure I turn down the brightness on the screen as much as possible since that is a bright lamp shining at you for 8 hours per day. My eyes are deteriorating with age too so this is getting more and more important. That blue light is not good for your retina. There are glasses with filter so you get the blue filtered out everywhere, might be something to look into soon I guess.
Amorymeltzer 7y ago
>There’s an obvious caveat to the comment about the human eye preferring dark objects against a light background. Apart from a few exceptions like fire, lightning, and bioluminescent fireflies, almost nothing in the natural world emits light. In our modern world, however, screens do emit light, and quite a lot of it. This for me is the crux of dark mode and is where this post falls flat: devices are just simply a different beast. They aren't newspapers or photographs, they are lamps with a color profile hotter than the Sun, and we should treat them differently. That's especially true of mobile devices, where being used before sunrise/after sunset is typical. It's not the same, but it reminds me of how we think and talk about color (additive versus subtractive). Finger painting as a kid you learn that mixing the three colors — Red, Yellow, and Blue — makes black, but play with a computer and you'll learn that the three colors — Red, Green, and Blue — make white. It's a different system because, simply put, it's an entirely different system.
- steve1977 7y ago
  If you can read something from paper, light got reflected from that paper. To the eye, it doesn't really make a difference if the paper was the original emitter of the light or not. With a newspaper or a photograph, you still see the light from a lamp, just reflected.
  - msquog 7y ago
    Right, but then you're ignoring ambient light. Your statement isn't true in a dark room, where the very much does care.
    - steve1977 7y ago
      But that's still not a fundamental property of screens, that's a property of a specific working environment. Screens should not be brighter than ambient light as a rule of thumb, i.e. if you hold a piece of paper next to your screen, the screen should not brighten up the paper. If it does, reduce brightness of your screen and/or turn up the light in your room. So, a dark room is not an ideal working environment anyway.
iamzozo 7y ago
"Attention, Axiom shoppers. Try blue! It's the new red!"
S_A_P 7y ago
The author lost me as soon as he/she compared dark mode to green screen crt. Do you really think the green crt was a design decision?? It was the balance of cost to performance that 1970s tech allowed. As for the other points, its largely subjective but I have dark mode enabled in every app that will support it. On windows, I run the experimental build so I can have more complete dark mode support, and enabled the half baked dark mode in sql server management studio. All my IDEs are set to dark mode, because eye strain is a thing and for me at least dark mode is much easier on the eyes.
- shawnz 7y ago
  > Do you really think the green crt was a design decision?? I think the point they are making is, why would we have ever moved away from the technologically simpler option if it also happened to be a better design? What made us get rid of terminal colours in favour of black-on-white, when we could have just improved the design of the white-on-black colours?
  - luma 7y ago
    I think the switch is easily explained by companies like Xerox and Apple looking to emulate paper documents, which was the preeminent design paradigm they both were chasing at the time.
- masswerk 7y ago
  As soon as there were raster CRTs, there wasn't much of a technical reason for light on black. Continuing with this was probably more for tradition and aesthetical expectations ("the gloom of the monitor" and a certain kind of heroism, which goes with it). Personally, I don't think there is an ideal solution to match all scenarios. There are some applications, where light on black may be superior, and others, where it's the other way round. Empirically, for content-heavy, lengthy text we had a few trends for light on black in the past (e.g. "cool web design" in the late 1990s) and reversed from this soon each time. For an example, I much prefer reading HN comments as-is as compared to a hypothetical dark mode UI.
  - 7y ago
vbuwivbiu 7y ago
first they argue that the MOAD and Xerox' Smalltalk pioneered dark-on-light after years of the reverse, then they argue that actually it's because vision-psychology. Well, which is it? Because there's no way the MOAD and Smalltalk chose dark-on-light because of visual perception research. Smalltalk's choice was probably motivated by a desire to make the UI look like paper (Xerox being in the paper business). Same with Apple's original Mac. At the time everyone's UI was paper so this familiar UI was important to replicate to sell. It also ignores the fact that we've had light-on-dark mode for ages: blueprints and microfiche, blackboards and granite tablets I mean, the Rosetta Stone is light-on-dark
Tade0 7y ago
I used to have perfect vision - I could see an amber LED display the size of an A3 sheet showing the time from 100m away. And remember preferring dark mode then. Now that my vision has somewhat deteriorated with age and I use glasses for driving during the night, I find dark mode annoying and blurry. My take is that it boils down to this.
masswerk 7y ago
Dark mode has certainly a "cool" vibe to it. It reminds me much of when light text on dark (mostly black) background was the hype for cool internet pages in the late 1990s. Incidentally, this trend ceased to be much of thing over the course of a year or so – for some reason.
WarOnPrivacy 7y ago
I'm pretty sure Light Vertigo has never been trendy. Tons of folks have used Dark Mode browser extensions for years to stave off the nausea from bright white layouts (and overly-lit rooms!). For us, the widespread adaptation of Dark Mode has been a God-send. Turning down brightness and contrast only works so far.
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
Why can't apps properly separate interface from implementation and let people make the app look however they want? Maybe I don't want dark mode or light mode. Maybe I want the background bright orange and the text florescent green. I'm the one using your app on my device, it should look the way I want. Seriously, why isn't choosing the text and background color of apps and websites a standard, simple thing?
- zambal 7y ago
  Because just providing config options for text and background wouldn't be enough. Most apps use more colors than just background/foreground, meaning those other colors should be configurable as well. Allowing users to configure all colors, would be in conflict with apps that use colors as part of some brand identity and for apps where this wouldn't be an issue, I guess most developers decide providing complete customization of colors is not worth the extra development time.
zambal 7y ago
Writing code in a dark mode for as long as I can remember, I thought that I'd always prefer light text on dark background when reading text on a screen, but eventually I realized that I prefer dark text on light background for almost everything, except reading code. I like using syntax highlighting and for me colorful text on a light background, no matter the quality of the color theme, is harder to read than the inverse.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  I do too — probably because most of my early coding was done over telnet / ssh and those almost always have white on black text. Agree that colored text contrasts better on a black background too.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    The reverse is probably why I have always preferred light-mode color schemes - I got my start with VB6 and then VC++ 6, where everything was black on white or black on light grey.
- discreteevent 7y ago
  This stuff is very subjective but for me if you have to use something like jsx where there is a lot of structure/punctuation then dark mode does make it easier to spot that mismatched bracket. But overall I prefer light mode because I can scan across pages of code much quicker and find what I want. The broader layout is more apparent to me. For the same reason I definitely prefer to read long form text in light mode. Which means that I would have to switch between dark and light mode anyway (even if most web content was switchable to dark mode). So it's light mode for me with at most #F5F5F5 background for code
  - ballenf 7y ago
    Maybe light mode is better for code review and dark for code writing. Subject to personal preference.
- ballenf 7y ago
YayamiOmate 7y ago
Dark mode isn't popular because it's hip, but because it's used. Apple follows tredns here, not set them. The reverse assumption in the article makes me doubt the rest. I don't trust results that say black on white put less strain on their eyesight and general congnitive stress, because I've personally consistently felt different. At best it depends on surrounding both backgrounds and light sources.
- liquid9 7y ago
  >Apple follows tredns here, not set them CD Drives and USB Ports beg to differ
  - apetrovic 7y ago
    OP said "here" => "in this case"
pornel 7y ago
Many of the studies mentioned in the article were made with CRTs. I wonder whether peculiarities of CRT are to blame for these results. Phosphor has non-linear response and limits ability to have sharp, thin white-on-black lines.
saagarjha 7y ago
Dark Mode looks nice to me at night, but I don’t particularly care for it during the day. I save myself the hassle by having a Launch Agent automatically switch between the two around sunset and sunrise.
kator 7y ago
I have Dyslexia and have always found light on dark background easier to read. I used green screens (amber even) and like everyone I went to the “light” side as GUI’s became a thing. But I always kept my xterm with black backgrounds. At one point I read an article about dark backgrounds helping dyslexics read better. I tried it on Kindle and in one year read 6x as many books as the year before, it was like someone had transformed me with a magic wand, I could read and enjoy more of what I was reading. I haven’t figured out a good way to get dark mode on iOS nor css hacks for dark mode HN. I did find a way to hack dark mode into Slack and Jenkins and those were amazing changes for me (and quite a few of my team). I worry that people think Dark Mode is a fad, to me it’s a gift and I hope the trend continues.
douglaswlance 7y ago
We evolved with dark objects on a light background, therefore dark mode is bad for your eyes? Wat? That argument makes no sense. It's like saying we evolved to walk barefoot, therefore shoes are bad for you. Just because we evolved a certain way, doesn't mean that's the best way to do things. My hypothesis is Dark mode is less light, and less light is better for your eyes. But until there are scientific studies on the topic, who knows.
- tigrezno 7y ago
  Shoes are indeed bad for you. They are good for you NOW because all your life you've been walking on shoes. If you were walking barefoot all your life, you'd have strong feet, as evolution wanted. Low light condition is actually awful for your eyes. I can use drive without glasses in the morning, but at night I really need them, because our eyes are designed for day light conditions.
- blissofbeing 7y ago
  Did you read the article? It actually points to numerous scientific studies that show that light mode is better. And by better I mean (from the article): "Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and at least some older studies suggest that using a positive polarity display results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort."
tomxor 7y ago
This is a very narrow argument, it's well know how much eye strain is caused by staring into a full screen LED all day. A darkmode allows concentration and focus over longer periods without strain that completely outweigh any reduced focus due to slightly worse perceived contrast... not to mention how much better rested you will be after using darkmode before bed.
gwking 7y ago
Personally I find light-on-dark to be much easier on my eyes over the course of the day, and especially at night. With light-on-dark, I can turn the screen brightness up higher without it hurting my eyes. Regarding the "dramatic new look" angle, what I find hilarious about this is remembering the vaporware that was MacOS Copland. My family had a Centris 610 and a MacUser magazine subscription. I was so eager to get that HiTech dark mode that I installed Kaleidoscope and Dad was Not Happy. Apart from the nostalgia of being a kid with a computer customized to the point of dysfunction, there is a sense in which Mojave is a realization of Copland's visual ambition, offering an alternative hi tech theme that takes a step away from the original desktop and paper metaphor. Interesting article on Kaleidoscope that I found while googling for an example screenshot: http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-kaleidoscope http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-kale... screenshot: http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg
trm42 7y ago
I really like white-on-black dark modes. They are somehow more pleasing than the other way round. There's a problem with all dark modes, though. If one is using laptop running on battery juice and needs to prolong the battery time, then conserving battery with low screen brightness makes reading the dark modes really hard. Hence I've ended up using multiple crucial apps like IDEs with black-on-white themes as they are more readable on dim laptop display. Annoying but better compromise than writing code without laptop, haha.
- celeritascelery 7y ago
  This is why OLED displays are so nice. They have much better battery life with a dark background.
falcolas 7y ago
One interesting trend I’ve seen is amongst Keratinous (uneven thinning of the cornea, causing bubbles) patients: they overwhelmingly prefer light mode on screens. The reason why is fairly straightforward - the additional light constricts the pupil, making the text sharper, leading to less eye fatigue. For this reason, I know a few of us tend to get annoyed when only offered dark modes (or half-baked light modes - looking at you, Discord).
NyashMyash 7y ago
I have a serious eye pathology and I hate you, guys. Really, dark mode makes it possible for me to work.
wh0rth 7y ago
For me, dark mode is largely a battery-saving measure. Especially with more OLED screens coming out on mobile devices, you can save a lot of energy by having some of your pixels completely turned off
_bxg1 7y ago
This is silly. Dark mode isn't about marginal differences in speed-of-visual-processing. It's about reducing eye strain, which is a different thing. My eyes physically hurt less when I'm using a dark theme. I really couldn't care less if my brain takes an extra few milliseconds to process what I'm looking at.
- ballenf 7y ago
  It's also about information density. The brain can discern so many different shades of color if they're not all washed out by a blinding white background. Or any lighter-than-the-text background.
titzer 7y ago
> The human eyes and brain prefer dark-on-light, and reversing that forces them to work harder to read text, parse controls, and comprehend what you’re seeing. If you've ever had an eye injury or been visually impaired and had to use a computer screen, you'll know the author is just plain wrong here. Absolutely amazing the author cites zero studies dealing with visual impairment. My anecdote: injured my epithilium in both eyes, almost went blind; looking at a computer screen produced unbearable pain that was only marginally tolerable in dark mode. Developed new empathy for visually impaired people.
ilmiont 7y ago
Well, it's subjective. For me personally light interfaces make my eyes hurt. Dark themes are, for me, without questions MUCH easier on the eyes, irrespective of what this article claims or the science says. Dark mode is a choice. You don't have to use it. I really hope the choice is preserved and extended into as many interfaces as possible. Just because YOU don't find it easier on the eyes (article author), does not mean that is true for everyone. If I was using a light theme in Sublime Text, or Office, or Terminal, I wouldn't be able to last very long in the workday....
bike-shedded 7y ago
Gee, that sure is a nice bike shed. I wonder what color HN would paint it...
marcus_holmes 7y ago
> Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light This is what bugs the ever-living shit out of me about this type of research. A study may well have been done that shows a majority preference by humans for dark-on-light. But unless the study showed that every human studied had that preference, it doesn't mean that all humans prefer dark-on-light. Going from "the bell curve is a bit skewed to dark-on-light" to "vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light, therefore light-on-dark is bullshit" is the thing that bad science journalism does, and it's a blight on humanity.
- noxToken 7y ago
  In terms of productivity, I'm probably like the average person. I probably do better with dark-on-light. I do know with certainty that light is much more comfortable if it's not fff white. A light grey or a light beige (f6f6ef) is infinitely more comfortable.
ilovecaching 7y ago
Based on my research, light on dark is actually better for you when you're staring at an array of lamps all day. With OLED screens you would also be saving energy. The one thing I do agree is that contrast is king. You should also always have night mode/redshift enabled and choose palettes that use low energy colors to reduce eye strain.
siegecraft 7y ago
Am I the only one who would prefer to just use f.lux's "Darkroom" mode (red on black, basically) for coding at night / in the dark? Doesn't kill my night vision. Of course you have to switch all of your apps out of "Dark Mode" or you'll just be starting at giant blobs of red.
sadness2 7y ago
While I was reading this post, I found the bright background was straining my eyes, so I turned on my dark-mode browser plugin, and then I found I could continue reading more comfortably.
Funes- 7y ago
Fully functional e-ink displays with a good refresh rate and color-capable are the solution: lower power consumption and better for our eyes. I'm looking forward to that.
- ballenf 7y ago
  The youtube channel Technology Connections and its #2 channel is doing a series on this right now. The potential is exciting, but the reality of how little development is going into the area is disappointing.
ashton314 7y ago
Most of the comments here seem to be gripes with the article, claims that dark backgrounds on light-emitting screens are better etc. I wholeheartedly agree. My first computer was a FreeBSD terminal in my dad’s office closet. Black screen, white text. Glorious. Now, can we please get a dark theme for HN?!
1e-9 7y ago
There is a significant physiological advantage to black text on white background. A bright background causes your pupil to constrict, which reduces the active area of your lens focusing light onto your fovea. Using less lens area reduces the affect of any lens imperfections, which results in a sharper image. If your lens is nearly perfect, you likely don't notice a difference. If you have significant imperfections, the difference is probably very noticeable. Edit: The effect is similar to a pinhole occluder used by an ophthalmologist to test your eyes without the affect of refractive errors from imperfections in your eye lenses. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder
teekert 7y ago
Dark mode is not only about reading text, it is also about (the interface around) viewing images or videos. I'll take a performance hit in reading some numbers on my banking app if it means not being flushed with white light in between watching images or videos. I haven't tried (extreme and perfect) adaptive brightness, this may be a solution too. But it should work pretty close to perfect in a very dimly let room if it is to prevent squeezing eyes when suddenly being hit by a completely white interface while keeping things legible.
blissofbeing 7y ago
I used to prefer dark mode because it reduced all white light. But then I realized that I don't have an issue with white light, just the blue light spectrum in white light. I have switched to light mode but with a heavy blue light filter and find it much better than dark mode on my eyes.
equalunique 7y ago
In a dark environment, I strongly prefer "dark mode" In a bright environment, I strongly prefer "light mode" The author here does have a point, but I'm not advocating for a world where we choose one over the other in every case. I appreciate designs that support both, because each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

131 points by notlukesky 7y ago

I especially love the way you can create a dark-mode CSS stylesheet with something as simple as: @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { }

nness 7y ago

Every article like this ignores the fact that Dark Mode is a fantastic accessibility feature if you have a vision impairment that results in ghosting/blurring/light-sensitivity. Features like "Dark Mode" are not about brightness, but contrast. I'm all for giving people the option. Assuming everyone is able is a crux of UI/UX design.

vallode 7y ago
This is a very good point, personally I do not like dark mode (but have used it for many years as a developer, before swapping back). But the OPTION for a user to display a page in dark mode is absolutely not a 'dark side'. Optional settings are the beauty of software, they shouldn't be shunned but encouraged.
- ChrisSD 7y ago
  The reason options are often shunned is that they exponentially increase the complexity. Every option needs to work with every other combination of options. Testing this can be very time consuming especially if it doesn't lend itself to automation. I'm not arguing against options but I am saying options come with a cost so the benefit has to be deemed to be worth the maintenance burden.
  - vallode 7y ago
    Wholeheartedly agreed! We always need to look at stuff from both angles and I forgot just how complicated adding new features can be (even if they are 'simple' changes, Chaos theory comes into mind.)
dangerbird2 7y ago
You mentioning that reminded me that iOS and macOS don't have a high-contrast mode like what Windows has had literally for decades.
- Amorymeltzer 7y ago
  OSX has an "increase contrast" mode, a contrast slider, and an invert colors option (among others) in the Accessibility preferences, and has for quite some time.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  What do you mean by “like what windows has had”? iOS and OS X have an accessibility setting to increase contrast, but maybe that’s different from how you expect it to look.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Err, both iOS/macOS have extended accessibility features, including high contrast mode and controls.
dijksterhuis 7y ago
> Features like "Dark Mode" are not about brightness, but contrast. Exactly. Something that the article doesn’t seem to pick up on is how we read and dark modes effect on that depends on what we’re reading. (The musician example doesn’t quite do it justice). AKAIK We see the shapes of words first, then some of the letters, then we understand the word. Hence why if y-u blank -ut s-me /etters, y-u can sti// read a sentence. I find light on dark easier to navigate with code because the “shapes” are easier to determine. Code is highly structured - even different variable names have different shapes. Having said that... Reading a full on research paper or something has to be dark on light for me. I’m reading something with less structure, where the words are one after the other. So... yeah. It’s context and task dependent. So it’s a good thing there’s a choice.
ljm 7y ago
For me it’s also about decluttering the UI (for want of a better term). Dark mode lets the UI get out of the way, especially if the actual workspace or content remains light. The MacOS mail client is a decent enough example - you can have dark UI but still render the email as light on dark.
SomeHacker44 7y ago
This is exactly correct. I have an astigmatism which causes chromatic abberation. Specifically, the B in RGB is usually out of focus when the R is in focus, although I can actually force my eyes to focus on the B and cause the opposite to occur. This has been exacerbated by my recent "graduation" to progressive glasses. For whatever reason these seem to cause their own chromatic abberation issues. Dark mode actually makes the fringing a bigger problem, but I configure everything not to use blues significantly and so it overall makes things more readable for me.
- l_t 7y ago
  You might've looked at this already, but you can use a program called f.lux to globally change the color temperature of your screen. It's intended to eliminate blue light to make it easier to sleep, but it's highly configurable and in your case it might help with readability.
  - pathartl 7y ago
    This basic feature is also in most OS's now labeled as "blue light filter" or "night mode".
  - manifestsilence 7y ago
    f.lux is super helpful. I'd rather look at black text on a configurably-dark red-tinted background than have to invert everything. Especially because I don't only look at a text editor all day. Not every program has dark mode for all its text, and f.lux is a global solution. It's also great that it has a timer built in so you can go darker as evening approaches.
jaabe 7y ago
Is it? Because I’m fairly nearsighted and have astigmatism, which can make text on screens very blurry when there is a low contrast, and it’s a lot worse with dark mode. Still, I agree that having both a light and a dark mode is better than having just one of them.
- binthere 7y ago
  For many users high contrast is enhanced when it's dark. See Windows High Contrast Mode as an example.

Krasnol 7y ago

I don't believe the (recent) move in customers for requesting dark mode in pages, programs and apps allows for that broad statement: > Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light. There are obviously quite many humans who don't. Even if it's scientifically better or god knows what. I do that. Prefer light-on-dark. Everywhere. I want to paint it black! It's not a hip, style thing. I'm not hip or stylish. I just hate the white and as a day moves on, my hate for that becomes greater. And yes I know about the programs that make your screen brightness lower. I have it on my home PC (and I don't like the yellowish tone...but it's better than nothing I guess). I can't have it on my work PC.

philliphaydon 7y ago
If I look at a white background I get eye strain and headaches. And if I look at a co workers screen while standing I can’t read the text. But with dark background I don’t get eye strain and headaches.
- ujoh1 7y ago
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thetest3r 7y ago
I'd suggest trying Dark Reader extension for your browser. It's a life-saver for me.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Wow thank you. I've been fiddling around with Stylus for the pages I use regularly but this is a simpler solution for them all.
Moru 7y ago
I always hated the bright background on computers. The green or amber old PC screens were better. The first program for inverting the colors I wrote on my first homecomputer, Atari ST. Since then I always look for something handy to switch to dark mode on my computers, even if they don't have a built in way of doing it. The one I'm using now is f.lux, working good enough for me. I can let it run normal colors when I start up some art program so I get correct colors and automatically switch back to red when I go to the darkmode editor. I also make sure I turn down the brightness on the screen as much as possible since that is a bright lamp shining at you for 8 hours per day. My eyes are deteriorating with age too so this is getting more and more important. That blue light is not good for your retina. There are glasses with filter so you get the blue filtered out everywhere, might be something to look into soon I guess.

Amorymeltzer 7y ago

>There’s an obvious caveat to the comment about the human eye preferring dark objects against a light background. Apart from a few exceptions like fire, lightning, and bioluminescent fireflies, almost nothing in the natural world emits light. In our modern world, however, screens do emit light, and quite a lot of it. This for me is the crux of dark mode and is where this post falls flat: devices are just simply a different beast. They aren't newspapers or photographs, they are lamps with a color profile hotter than the Sun, and we should treat them differently. That's especially true of mobile devices, where being used before sunrise/after sunset is typical. It's not the same, but it reminds me of how we think and talk about color (additive versus subtractive). Finger painting as a kid you learn that mixing the three colors — Red, Yellow, and Blue — makes black, but play with a computer and you'll learn that the three colors — Red, Green, and Blue — make white. It's a different system because, simply put, it's an entirely different system.

steve1977 7y ago
If you can read something from paper, light got reflected from that paper. To the eye, it doesn't really make a difference if the paper was the original emitter of the light or not. With a newspaper or a photograph, you still see the light from a lamp, just reflected.
- msquog 7y ago
  Right, but then you're ignoring ambient light. Your statement isn't true in a dark room, where the very much does care.
  - steve1977 7y ago
    But that's still not a fundamental property of screens, that's a property of a specific working environment. Screens should not be brighter than ambient light as a rule of thumb, i.e. if you hold a piece of paper next to your screen, the screen should not brighten up the paper. If it does, reduce brightness of your screen and/or turn up the light in your room. So, a dark room is not an ideal working environment anyway.

iamzozo 7y ago

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

S_A_P 7y ago

The author lost me as soon as he/she compared dark mode to green screen crt. Do you really think the green crt was a design decision?? It was the balance of cost to performance that 1970s tech allowed. As for the other points, its largely subjective but I have dark mode enabled in every app that will support it. On windows, I run the experimental build so I can have more complete dark mode support, and enabled the half baked dark mode in sql server management studio. All my IDEs are set to dark mode, because eye strain is a thing and for me at least dark mode is much easier on the eyes.

shawnz 7y ago
> Do you really think the green crt was a design decision?? I think the point they are making is, why would we have ever moved away from the technologically simpler option if it also happened to be a better design? What made us get rid of terminal colours in favour of black-on-white, when we could have just improved the design of the white-on-black colours?
- luma 7y ago
  I think the switch is easily explained by companies like Xerox and Apple looking to emulate paper documents, which was the preeminent design paradigm they both were chasing at the time.
masswerk 7y ago
As soon as there were raster CRTs, there wasn't much of a technical reason for light on black. Continuing with this was probably more for tradition and aesthetical expectations ("the gloom of the monitor" and a certain kind of heroism, which goes with it). Personally, I don't think there is an ideal solution to match all scenarios. There are some applications, where light on black may be superior, and others, where it's the other way round. Empirically, for content-heavy, lengthy text we had a few trends for light on black in the past (e.g. "cool web design" in the late 1990s) and reversed from this soon each time. For an example, I much prefer reading HN comments as-is as compared to a hypothetical dark mode UI.
- 7y ago

vbuwivbiu 7y ago

first they argue that the MOAD and Xerox' Smalltalk pioneered dark-on-light after years of the reverse, then they argue that actually it's because vision-psychology. Well, which is it? Because there's no way the MOAD and Smalltalk chose dark-on-light because of visual perception research. Smalltalk's choice was probably motivated by a desire to make the UI look like paper (Xerox being in the paper business). Same with Apple's original Mac. At the time everyone's UI was paper so this familiar UI was important to replicate to sell. It also ignores the fact that we've had light-on-dark mode for ages: blueprints and microfiche, blackboards and granite tablets I mean, the Rosetta Stone is light-on-dark

Tade0 7y ago

I used to have perfect vision - I could see an amber LED display the size of an A3 sheet showing the time from 100m away. And remember preferring dark mode then. Now that my vision has somewhat deteriorated with age and I use glasses for driving during the night, I find dark mode annoying and blurry. My take is that it boils down to this.

masswerk 7y ago

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

WarOnPrivacy 7y ago

I'm pretty sure Light Vertigo has never been trendy. Tons of folks have used Dark Mode browser extensions for years to stave off the nausea from bright white layouts (and overly-lit rooms!). For us, the widespread adaptation of Dark Mode has been a God-send. Turning down brightness and contrast only works so far.

tenebrisalietum 7y ago

Why can't apps properly separate interface from implementation and let people make the app look however they want? Maybe I don't want dark mode or light mode. Maybe I want the background bright orange and the text florescent green. I'm the one using your app on my device, it should look the way I want. Seriously, why isn't choosing the text and background color of apps and websites a standard, simple thing?

zambal 7y ago
Because just providing config options for text and background wouldn't be enough. Most apps use more colors than just background/foreground, meaning those other colors should be configurable as well. Allowing users to configure all colors, would be in conflict with apps that use colors as part of some brand identity and for apps where this wouldn't be an issue, I guess most developers decide providing complete customization of colors is not worth the extra development time.

zambal 7y ago

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

wayoutthere 7y ago
I do too — probably because most of my early coding was done over telnet / ssh and those almost always have white on black text. Agree that colored text contrasts better on a black background too.
- thrower123 7y ago
  The reverse is probably why I have always preferred light-mode color schemes - I got my start with VB6 and then VC++ 6, where everything was black on white or black on light grey.
discreteevent 7y ago
This stuff is very subjective but for me if you have to use something like jsx where there is a lot of structure/punctuation then dark mode does make it easier to spot that mismatched bracket. But overall I prefer light mode because I can scan across pages of code much quicker and find what I want. The broader layout is more apparent to me. For the same reason I definitely prefer to read long form text in light mode. Which means that I would have to switch between dark and light mode anyway (even if most web content was switchable to dark mode). So it's light mode for me with at most #F5F5F5 background for code
- ballenf 7y ago
  Maybe light mode is better for code review and dark for code writing. Subject to personal preference.
ballenf 7y ago

YayamiOmate 7y ago

Dark mode isn't popular because it's hip, but because it's used. Apple follows tredns here, not set them. The reverse assumption in the article makes me doubt the rest. I don't trust results that say black on white put less strain on their eyesight and general congnitive stress, because I've personally consistently felt different. At best it depends on surrounding both backgrounds and light sources.

liquid9 7y ago
>Apple follows tredns here, not set them CD Drives and USB Ports beg to differ
- apetrovic 7y ago
  OP said "here" => "in this case"

pornel 7y ago

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

saagarjha 7y ago

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

kator 7y ago

I have Dyslexia and have always found light on dark background easier to read. I used green screens (amber even) and like everyone I went to the “light” side as GUI’s became a thing. But I always kept my xterm with black backgrounds. At one point I read an article about dark backgrounds helping dyslexics read better. I tried it on Kindle and in one year read 6x as many books as the year before, it was like someone had transformed me with a magic wand, I could read and enjoy more of what I was reading. I haven’t figured out a good way to get dark mode on iOS nor css hacks for dark mode HN. I did find a way to hack dark mode into Slack and Jenkins and those were amazing changes for me (and quite a few of my team). I worry that people think Dark Mode is a fad, to me it’s a gift and I hope the trend continues.

douglaswlance 7y ago

We evolved with dark objects on a light background, therefore dark mode is bad for your eyes? Wat? That argument makes no sense. It's like saying we evolved to walk barefoot, therefore shoes are bad for you. Just because we evolved a certain way, doesn't mean that's the best way to do things. My hypothesis is Dark mode is less light, and less light is better for your eyes. But until there are scientific studies on the topic, who knows.

tigrezno 7y ago
Shoes are indeed bad for you. They are good for you NOW because all your life you've been walking on shoes. If you were walking barefoot all your life, you'd have strong feet, as evolution wanted. Low light condition is actually awful for your eyes. I can use drive without glasses in the morning, but at night I really need them, because our eyes are designed for day light conditions.
blissofbeing 7y ago
Did you read the article? It actually points to numerous scientific studies that show that light mode is better. And by better I mean (from the article): "Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and at least some older studies suggest that using a positive polarity display results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort."

tomxor 7y ago

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

gwking 7y ago

Personally I find light-on-dark to be much easier on my eyes over the course of the day, and especially at night. With light-on-dark, I can turn the screen brightness up higher without it hurting my eyes. Regarding the "dramatic new look" angle, what I find hilarious about this is remembering the vaporware that was MacOS Copland. My family had a Centris 610 and a MacUser magazine subscription. I was so eager to get that HiTech dark mode that I installed Kaleidoscope and Dad was Not Happy. Apart from the nostalgia of being a kid with a computer customized to the point of dysfunction, there is a sense in which Mojave is a realization of Copland's visual ambition, offering an alternative hi tech theme that takes a step away from the original desktop and paper metaphor. Interesting article on Kaleidoscope that I found while googling for an example screenshot: http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-kaleidoscope http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/articles/learning-from-kale... screenshot: http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures/ss/hitech.jpg

trm42 7y ago

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

celeritascelery 7y ago
This is why OLED displays are so nice. They have much better battery life with a dark background.

falcolas 7y ago

One interesting trend I’ve seen is amongst Keratinous (uneven thinning of the cornea, causing bubbles) patients: they overwhelmingly prefer light mode on screens. The reason why is fairly straightforward - the additional light constricts the pupil, making the text sharper, leading to less eye fatigue. For this reason, I know a few of us tend to get annoyed when only offered dark modes (or half-baked light modes - looking at you, Discord).

NyashMyash 7y ago

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

wh0rth 7y ago

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

_bxg1 7y ago

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

ballenf 7y ago
It's also about information density. The brain can discern so many different shades of color if they're not all washed out by a blinding white background. Or any lighter-than-the-text background.

titzer 7y ago

> The human eyes and brain prefer dark-on-light, and reversing that forces them to work harder to read text, parse controls, and comprehend what you’re seeing. If you've ever had an eye injury or been visually impaired and had to use a computer screen, you'll know the author is just plain wrong here. Absolutely amazing the author cites zero studies dealing with visual impairment. My anecdote: injured my epithilium in both eyes, almost went blind; looking at a computer screen produced unbearable pain that was only marginally tolerable in dark mode. Developed new empathy for visually impaired people.

ilmiont 7y ago

Well, it's subjective. For me personally light interfaces make my eyes hurt. Dark themes are, for me, without questions MUCH easier on the eyes, irrespective of what this article claims or the science says. Dark mode is a choice. You don't have to use it. I really hope the choice is preserved and extended into as many interfaces as possible. Just because YOU don't find it easier on the eyes (article author), does not mean that is true for everyone. If I was using a light theme in Sublime Text, or Office, or Terminal, I wouldn't be able to last very long in the workday....

bike-shedded 7y ago

Gee, that sure is a nice bike shed. I wonder what color HN would paint it...

marcus_holmes 7y ago

> Vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light This is what bugs the ever-living shit out of me about this type of research. A study may well have been done that shows a majority preference by humans for dark-on-light. But unless the study showed that every human studied had that preference, it doesn't mean that all humans prefer dark-on-light. Going from "the bell curve is a bit skewed to dark-on-light" to "vision research has shown that humans prefer dark-on-light, therefore light-on-dark is bullshit" is the thing that bad science journalism does, and it's a blight on humanity.

noxToken 7y ago
In terms of productivity, I'm probably like the average person. I probably do better with dark-on-light. I do know with certainty that light is much more comfortable if it's not fff white. A light grey or a light beige (f6f6ef) is infinitely more comfortable.

ilovecaching 7y ago

Based on my research, light on dark is actually better for you when you're staring at an array of lamps all day. With OLED screens you would also be saving energy. The one thing I do agree is that contrast is king. You should also always have night mode/redshift enabled and choose palettes that use low energy colors to reduce eye strain.

siegecraft 7y ago

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

sadness2 7y ago

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

Funes- 7y ago

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

ballenf 7y ago
The youtube channel Technology Connections and its #2 channel is doing a series on this right now. The potential is exciting, but the reality of how little development is going into the area is disappointing.

ashton314 7y ago

Most of the comments here seem to be gripes with the article, claims that dark backgrounds on light-emitting screens are better etc. I wholeheartedly agree. My first computer was a FreeBSD terminal in my dad’s office closet. Black screen, white text. Glorious. Now, can we please get a dark theme for HN?!

1e-9 7y ago

There is a significant physiological advantage to black text on white background. A bright background causes your pupil to constrict, which reduces the active area of your lens focusing light onto your fovea. Using less lens area reduces the affect of any lens imperfections, which results in a sharper image. If your lens is nearly perfect, you likely don't notice a difference. If you have significant imperfections, the difference is probably very noticeable. Edit: The effect is similar to a pinhole occluder used by an ophthalmologist to test your eyes without the affect of refractive errors from imperfections in your eye lenses. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_occluder

teekert 7y ago

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

blissofbeing 7y ago

I used to prefer dark mode because it reduced all white light. But then I realized that I don't have an issue with white light, just the blue light spectrum in white light. I have switched to light mode but with a heavy blue light filter and find it much better than dark mode on my eyes.

equalunique 7y ago

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