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Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

241 points by burtonator 7y ago

kleer001 7y ago
As long as there's a choice between dark and light mode I'm happy. Heck I don't even really need a customizable interface color setup anymore, I've given up on that. IMHO "Hot Dog Stand" on Windows 3.1 was the best it could ever be. Dear god don't let Hot Dog Stand be the default.
peterwwillis 7y ago
Can someone post some links to studies? I remember reading that your screen brightness should be close to the ambient light level, and it does help my eyes when I do that adjustment, but I don't know why. White screen = brighter screen, so dark screens at night would make a less-bright screen, and vice versa, which seems to back up the theory.
zeroxx1986 7y ago
The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark Mode with BLACK MODE (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - is really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast. I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the dark mode (which is BLACK MODE).
mixmastamyk 7y ago
In the old days, apps simply used the system color scheme. That allowed one to globally choose what they wanted. Now everyone has to implement light and dark “skinz.” Color me not impressed.
- dtech 7y ago
  Users also expect prettier designs than the standard GUI widgets from the OS nowadays. Custom themes also could lead to ugly visuals in apps and accessibility problems.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Not really. Designers expect prettier designs than standard GUI widgets, I'm not convinced users have ever wanted non-standard widgets. In fact, more than a decade of bitching-about-java has taught me that users hate non-native widgets. But hey, developers love them so fuck users. Native widgets play significantly better with all accessibility tools, in part because native widgets are so customizable. You didn't need bespoke "Dark Mode" that was some designer's wet dream of what an interface should look like, you could just customize your widgets for what you needed: https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea/tumblr_mwjaieyign1t2as4so5_1280.png https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea...
  - myu701 7y ago
    Do they though? I've had several family members buy Windows 10 PCs and they specifically requested I 'install Windows XP on it' (install Classic shell + a few other utilities to make the shell look more like Luna or Aero depending on the requestor) I'd say users expect things to look like what they are used to, whatever that user-specific preference is. Anecdotes not data etc.
zeroxx1986 7y ago
The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark mode with BLACK mode (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - is really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast. I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the Dark mode (which is, again, BLACK mode in reality).
- mjevans 7y ago
  Contrast can stay, for me "dark mode" or 'night theme' is about reducing the overall luminous intensity. My own belief is that when a sea of white is removed the need for 'crisp black' to stand out against it is also reduced; this might relate to a different perceived contrast due to the lowered noise floor (far less photons being rejected, so it's easier to pick out the desired ones).
- stephenr 7y ago
  I don’t use any of those apps but I concur with the point: dark mode that benefits the eye doesn’t use a black background. Which of course contrasts with the “dark mode” for OLED devices, which do use black. “Good” implementations I’ve seen allow a couple of choices.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  At least some of us prefer a Dark mode that especially uses real black in backgrounds because of OLED and other HDR screens. Real black on many OLED devices is an entirely unlit pixel. That's very plainly less light being forced at your eyes from that screen, and absolutely will reduce certain forms of eye strain. Black backgrounds literally fade into the background of the screen. Grays and dark grays don't do that, they need at least a little lighting. As with almost all aesthetic preferences, your mileage and your hardware may vary.
- 7y ago
acheron 7y ago
Take note, web designers.
Shank 7y ago
I'm definitely in the camp that light / dark mode should match the time of day or ambient light level. I love having "light mode" in the morning, but at night I always prefer dark mode. But this is because I have a huge amount of ambient light in the room in the day, and at night I have none. Dark mode is unreadable to me when the bright sun is shining on a monitor. Not so with light mode.
dep_b 7y ago
I find default dark mode all of the day super depressing but later at night I find it easier to use with the lights out. So the balance iOS uses for auto enabling dark mode to me is pretty good. It would be nice if more websites would allow me to use it but at least reader mode supports it.
heavymark 7y ago
URL goes to Localhost, assuming they meant o have https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-Default-With-95-Percent-Preferring-it-Over-Light-Mode.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-D...
- cygned 7y ago
  The canonical URL in the meta data is wrong, points to localhost:4000.
USNetizen 7y ago
Am I the only one where "dark mode" interfaces really screw with the eyes?
- wrs 7y ago
  No, you are not. :) People have been looking at dark words on white paper for quite a while now with no ill effects, and I’ve never felt an inclination to invert the relationship. Even in 1980 I preferred the very few CRT terminals that operated in “light mode”.
api 7y ago
I think the rise of dark mode is mostly related to really good displays. Dark mode looks like shit on CRTs and even older flat panels with poor contrast.
- tonyjstark 7y ago
  OTOH, nowadays most displays are glary and dark mode in a non-dark environment lets these display act as a mirror. As a cynic I assume we live in a time of narcissistic personality disorder ;) With the bright mode I can reduce the brightness of my screens and I can still read everything. I also never have the urge to put dark-mode code on presentation slides that are unreadable in all but perfect condition.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  And OLEDs in particular, where black stops transmitting light at all. (And saves power, too.)
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Plus you can't burn in what you didn't turn on.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      But you can burn in the turned on pixels can't you? Do the LEDs lose luminance with age?
      - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        They do sadly, which is why you wanna keep them off, or I suppose burn them all out at the same rate. I know my OLED TV actually does a burn-in balancing once I turn it off.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    An OLED and a dark default would probably also reduce insomnia. I don't know about you guys, but Night Shift at max setting is still too blue for me. I end up turning the brightness down. I just need to switch to dark.
coldcode 7y ago
95% of what people? I know people of both persuasions in about equal numbers, which makes me question the 95% number. Personally I hate dark mode except late at night as staring at a dark screen and then walking away from my desk makes me dizzy.
- burtonator 7y ago
  I talk about it in the post but it was Discord users but also the users of Polar. They prefer dark mode and it is one of our top requested features. I'd love to see more data though.
- wolco 7y ago
  This isn't 95% of the population. This is 95% prefer dark becausw the light version is awful. More of a click-bait title than necessary. 95% of discord users prefer dark would be more accurate.
zepto 7y ago
This could easily just be a fashion trend.
whack 7y ago
It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society. I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an overcast day, whereas light mode feels like a bright sunny day. I've noticed that most techies do prefer dark mode, and I also recall reading that techies are disproportionately night owls - I wonder if there's a correlation there. I suspect though that this preference is reversed for the general population.
- jolmg 7y ago
  If system-wide themes really worked, I'd probably be switching now and then between light and dark themes. Dark mode is kind of gloomy but it's also easier on the eyes.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    System wide themes used to work, and we didn't need an explicit Dark Mode because of it. Sadly, computer interfaces have regressed significantly from 1995.
  - jiofih 7y ago
    Latest releases of MacOS (and iOS) have it, and you can even set it to go into dark mode automatically at night.
    - jolmg 7y ago
      Well, I meant something with more freedom of styling, not just some established light and dark theme. Like change the colors of system-wide buttons, text inputs, window title-bars, tabs, etc. Change the system-wide accenting color to Red, Blue, Green, Gold, etc.
      - jiofih 7y ago
Razengan 7y ago
I wish HN would get a dark mode, and I don’t know why major apps like WhatsApp etc. are still dragging their asses over dark mode support while smaller apps with more complex UIs have already supported it for months.
- vidarh 7y ago
  There are plenty of user-written styles that will give you a dark HN. I'm using this one [1] right now, using Stylus[2] (Chrome extension) to apply it. [1] https://userstyles.org/styles/22794/a-dark-hacker-news https://userstyles.org/styles/22794/a-dark-hacker-news [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...
  - _-_T_-_ 7y ago
    Cool, TIL - thank you
- dewey 7y ago
  Maybe because the small apps have a very targeted audience that enjoys dark mode. If you ask 10 random people on the street only 1 will probably know what “dark mode” is or would think about actively switching to it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - threatofrain 7y ago
    Dark mode is a talking point for both iOS and Android imo.
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  You can use the Dark Reader extension for Firefox on computers & Android, which makes all sites dark, or the Stylus extension which allows you to load custom site-specific stylesheets. Stylus allows access to a big repository of community-made themes and there are surely some dark ones for HN. These both are likely also available for Chrome.
peterfisher 7y ago
this is frustrating because I have diplopia and so my life looks like: https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png when you have white text on a black background. This affect doesn't happen on "light" mode systems...
- rightbyte 7y ago
  Funny. I thought that's how bright on dark text looked for everyone. Couldn't see the shadow until I tilted the screen. Do I have diplopia or do people with diplopia see more of the effect?
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I just switched back and forth from vi in my terminal to that image a couple of times. I see the blurring on that image immediately, every time. I don't see anything like that on the terminal.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- b3kart 7y ago
  As a person with an eye condition that also makes things look like that (and worse), it took me a while to see what's wrong with this image.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
While I also prefer dark mode overall, the majority of dark editor color schemes strain my eyes more than light ones. Primarily this is because they use really bright saturated colors or solid white text on dark backgrounds, which makes my eyes strain as if they are looking at LED headlights during a night drive. OS X uses nice muted yet distinct colors on both ends of the brightness spectrum. I wish I could find an IntelliJ theme that matches the same spirit.
- burtonator 7y ago
  Yes. SOLID white #ffffff on black #000000 is a rough scheme. The whites need to be muted a bit so they're light grey basically.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I used grey on black for many years but recently switched to pure white. It is much easier to read. I have my monitors set fairly dim, about 120cd/m^2. This is what most colorspaces expect the whitepoint to be, but it is very dim compared to the maximum amount of light a monitor can put out. It is about 12/100 on my monitor. https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor-brightness-is-recommended/ https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor-brightn... Anyway, my point here is that #ffffff is not any sort of color you can see, merely a number that represents the maximum possible amount of red, green, and blue. If that's too much light, you can turn it down. You can also play with gamma curves to change the relative intensities down to pure black. Some people use 2.2 in dark rooms and 2.4 for "normal" indoor illumination.
- jfaat 7y ago
  I've been a huge fan of tomorrow night eighties for the same reason. You may like it too. example: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme/master/Images/Tomorrow-Night-Eighties.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Them... JetBrains compatible version: https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/JetBrains https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/J...
- alpaca128 7y ago
imdsm 7y ago
I am the 5%
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kleer001 7y ago
Personally I can't stand dark mode. It literally hurts my eyes. Strain after a few moments and interlacing ghost lines that linger in my vision for a minute. Does anyone else have this? Is it brain cancer?! edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer. Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.
- jrockway 7y ago
  It's not brain cancer but rather an artifact of how the eye/brain system works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage
  - kleer001 7y ago
    Honestly, that's more of what I think. I figure I get a higher activation of my edge detection neurons. Somehow.
- __s 7y ago
  It's not brain cancer
  - eknkc 7y ago
    Everything is brain cancer if you look it up online.
- branko_d 7y ago
  I have exactly the same experience.
- butz 7y ago
  Same here too.
- benji_is_me 7y ago
  Dark mode makes me tired, I think. I don't mind normal black text on a white background.
- 7y ago
dpcan 7y ago
I don't know many people my age who can still handle dark mode. It was easy for me many years ago. I looked at command lines all day and no problem. Now I see blurry lines for 10 minutes all around me if I have to spend any length of time in a command line interface, or look at an article in dark mode. This is, unfortunately, an accessibility issue, not a design issue.
- robotron 7y ago
  I'm older, my eyes are getting pretty bad, and I have to have dark mode. This is why data on this is important.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Much of it depends on the room you’re in currently.
  - burtonator 7y ago
    I'm the same way... 42 now and my eyes aren't the same. Definitely macular degeneration. Dark mode really helps me.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    I'd say this is why we need software to respect accessibility and configurability. We didn't need "Dark Mode" in Windows 95 because we could configure the crap out of our native widgets. Then using the web as an application platform became a thing, accessibility was jettisoned in the name of "muh design!" and all personal computing has suffered for it.
  - z92 7y ago
    Second this. Aged. Dark mode and command prompt is less tiresome on eye than white.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  I'm older and I prefer dark mode, whether for CLI or GUI. It reduces eyestrain for me.
AlexandrB 7y ago
People like novelty. Dark mode is something new in UX design. I'm not sure I'd read into it any more than that until a few more years pass.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  New? Never used DOS, a terminal, or a custom dark theme on Windows XP?
- jolmg 7y ago
  Dark mode toggles in applications and websites is kind of new (not really, but it's been popularized recently), but system-wide theming with dark themes has been around for a long time.
- dageshi 7y ago
  Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens and to greater and lesser extent everybody spends lots of time infront of screens nowadays. That being said, I have pretty good luck with browser plugins that auto dark mode websites reasonably well. I'm not sure I'd go redesigning the entire web with darkmodes in mind when plugins can do a good enough job.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens For some people, yes. For others, no. That's why this should be a configurable option.
  - b3kart 7y ago
    > Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens [citation needed]. Why do people keep making these general statements. Every time they do counter-examples immediately appear in replies. Why can't we all agree that we're all different and it's largely a matter of preference.
- pixelbash 7y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure, I used dark mode winamp and litestep themes back in the winxp days. It could have originally been that crt white was not that nice, but I still find a largely white lcd screen a bit much.
120bits 7y ago
I have using VI for years now and I prefer black background with green text, and I'm sure most people do. When I transitioned over to a modern IDE Atom/Code/Sublime, the first thing I wanted was to have a decent dark theme. I did try few of them but it was hard on my eyes(maybe because my eyes have adjusted to what I have been looking at for years) I finally settled on Code editor and its been ok so far.
- roland35 7y ago
  Badwolf is my personal favorite dark theme: a nice black with orange and red.
memossy 7y ago
Left shift + left alt + PrtSc = dark mode for word and all sorts via high contrast mode on Windows
- void445be54d48a 7y ago
  High contrast mode is not dark mode.
  - antonyh 7y ago
    It makes web pages like HN dark (in FF). I don't get why it takes so long to do it though, so toggling it is frustrating, and the side effects are pretty horrific as it throws boxes around everything.
agigao 7y ago
Nope.
vsyu 7y ago
I heard dark mode might not actually help in terms of being easier on the eyes?
wenc 7y ago
I like dark mode -- it has a sleek aesthetic. The only time dark mode is bad is when you're doing a product demo in a darkened room, like at a conference. It's really hard to make out text in dark mode in a dark room.
CharlesW 7y ago
It's novel right now, just as dark-on-light displays were novel when Lisa and Macintosh were introduced. Also, I suspect nostalgia (or anemoia) is involved. However, research shows that dark-on-light (positive polarity) displays are better for most people most of the time, with some exceptions. For those who want to go deeper, several studies and papers are cited in the article The Dark Side of Dark Mode: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/
- clumsysmurf 7y ago
  I have cataracts just outside the center of my vision, and they are more visible against a white background. For this reason I prefer dark mode, as they are not visible, they just distort.
emptybottle 7y ago
Ironic that this article was published on a website that doesn't use dark mode.
sekou 7y ago
Are there any efforts to standardize a way to default to a dark color scheme if a website has it?
- fanf2 7y ago
  The prefers-color-scheme media query https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I switch back and forth from time to time. For a while I like dark until I get bored with it. Then I switch to light until I get bored.
rayascott 7y ago
I don't like dark mode.
oblib 7y ago
I only have a few apps on my old Mac that have a dark mode UI. Pixelmator is one of them and the small tool windows blend into each other and it's hard for me to discern their boundaries. And I strain with the tiny text on them. I really wish it had an option to turn that off and rarely use it because I can't. I don't like it at all. Makes me wonder if it's because I'm getting old and my vision isn't aa sharp as it used to be. My main monitor has a "low blue light" setting that I do like though. It took me a bit to get used to it but I can really feel the difference if I turn it off now. I've since adjusted my two peripheral monitors to lower the blue light settings and that's helped reduce eye strain a lot for me.
crazygringo 7y ago
Dark mode is great when you're using a screen casually close to bedtime and don't want a painful bright light. It's also great when you're doing image or video editing and need to be able to see full contrast in the dark areas, without being overwhemlmed by bright light surrounding. But it's objectively far worse if you're reading significant amounts of text, for the simple optical reason that light bleeds inside of lenses, including in your eyes -- that white "pollutes" black but not vice-versa. Thus with black-on-white text, letterforms stay separate, clear, and legible. Any light spreading simply makes the letterforms appear, say, at 10% brightness instead of 0% brightness. Zero problems with legibility, still plenty of contrast. But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. Now granted, if you're 15 years old with perfect vision, it may not be particularly noticeable or objectionable. But the older you get or worse eyesight you have, the more it becomes a big problem. So dark mode is nice to have, but for most apps going dark-only is objectively bad for accessibility, and legibility generally.
- dustyfence 7y ago
  I second this
- jeromenerf 7y ago
  Pixmap / raster fonts, with no antialiasing, at a somewhat large size are great light on dark. White on dark with fuzzy fonts on non hidpi screens is terrible indeed.
- Izkata 7y ago
  > But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. I, uh, don't see a halo. Never have. I see streaks/starbursts, kinda like this quora post [0], except I've seen streetlights like that my whole life (so I don't think it's an eye problem like they suggest). Maybe that influences why I find dark mode easier on the eyes? No blurring, but it's also not sharp enough to cause the starburst. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-light-I-see-whenever-I-stare-at-a-bright-light-at-night https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-ligh...
ConcernedCoder 7y ago
I was told long ago in the newspaper business that "dark mode" ( background darker than foreground ) was unprofessional / hacker looking, and "light mode" ( background lighter than foreground ) was the opposite, and I wonder if that generality still holds true in the corporate world?
JohnFen 7y ago
I hate dark modes, but I don't actually care what the default is -- as long as I can still set a light mode.
petercooper 7y ago
I far prefer dark mode for "chrome" and OS theming, etc. but not for documents. So the idea that just because I have dark mode selected means I want every site to look like a porn site and my emails to all have back backgrounds is very wrong. I want normal documents, just as they were, but with a dark theme around them.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
It really depends on the environment the program is developed in. I have seen guis for autmation, that was developed in glasshouse skyscrapers- and was light as hell, and then developed to dimly lit factories, who have to look at this searchlight of a screen during the nightshift. Praise be on windows, for allowing to invert colours (High contrast themes).
tomatsu 7y ago
I prefer light mode + f.lux or Redshift. There's no need to stare at cold blue light all day long. Fun fact, there is actually a CSS media query for selecting dark/light themes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
acd 7y ago
I prefer light mode by default. I think there should be an os level setting if you prefer dark or light mode. And yes there is a certain level of fashion between dark and light mode which seems to move back and forwards every now and then. This reminds me somehow of the moves between Terminal(thin) -> Server(thick) to Workstation(thick) -> Tablet(Thin) -> Cloud(Thick) -> Client side(Thick).
rammy1234 7y ago
When you open your app, It says we collect cookies for feature usage. There is only one button "Accept". Where is this button called "Decline" ?
IronWolve 7y ago
Been using dark reader addon in both chrome/firefox, and love it. Bright white in the eyes when your trying to relax and read is amazingly offensive. I use it on HackerNews too.
- acheron 7y ago
  Thanks for this recommendation. Just installed it.
mmanfrin 7y ago
I wish I could make the general internet dark mode (and I've tried extensions, they don't work all that well). Give me a dark mode HN. White backgrounds hurt my eyes. I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day, let me reduce some of that strain.
- b3kart 7y ago
  > I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day I wonder why white backgrounds hurt your eyes...
gwern 7y ago
This seems like something where 'cheap talk' is a serious problem. You're not even surveying or polling users, you're hearing from self-selected ones. And even if you get a representative sample, what people say is different from what they do: users may not even know if they genuinely prefer it. Lots of design is subconscious, and there are measurable effects like additional milliseconds in loadtime where I doubt anyone would ordinarily be able to notice without sitting down with a stopwatch - it just feels worse. If it is really impossible to support more than one theme in the long run, this seems like a perfect use-case for an A/B test: randomize half your users into dark-mode and half into light-mode, and track total attrition and activity over the next few months (and not some proxy variable, switching to dark mode is too important to use some unreliable intermediate measurement).
gyrfalcon 7y ago
When does Hacker News get a darkmode then? :-)
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
The recent trend of introducing separate "light" and "dark" modes is a band-aid solution to the larger problem: modern interfaces lack contrast. Everything is either mostly-bright or mostly-dark, and I find both physically tiring. I was playing around with a virtualized copy of Snow Leopard last weekend. Coming from modern macOS, what I find most visually striking is always the range of tones. The beautifully deep gray window chrome fades into the background, and pushes white content to the forefront without rendering it blindingly bright. Colored accents on interactable elements make the interface easy to scan. When I squint, I can still see everything. You'd never consider adding a dark mode to this interface—or at least, I personally can't imagine what one would look like, because the interface is neither light nor dark to begin with. The result is far easier on my eyes.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  That's a great point -- before Microsoft introduced "flat design" which everyone else then copied (both Apple and Google), there was both a lot more variation in background colors and varied usage of color generally. I understand and sympathize with the philosophy behind flat design -- that it intentionally puts the interface in the background (low contrast, less variation), so whatever content you're consuming (photos, videos, book text) is the focus. But I also sympathize with your point -- that when you want to use the interface to do stuff rather than merely scroll through content, it's simply harder now.
NauticalStu 7y ago
I wish there were more "medium" themes. I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer. I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal. My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha. https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visual-studio https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visua...
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  I like Gruvbox for the same reason
eddyg 7y ago
The Dark Side of Dark Mode https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ "To summarize, a dark-on-light (positive polarity) display like a Mac in 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. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes"
excalibur 7y ago
I immediately thought of this article: https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it-out-there-fuck-dark-mode-sucks-worst-awful/ https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it-ou... Just putting it out there: Fuck Callum Booth's opinion.
unglaublich 7y ago
After trying both light and dark themed interfaces for a few years, I concluded that for me there's only one setup that works: light theme with low brightness (monitor setting) and 'flux'/'night light'. That way, my monitor looks just like everything else in my office, like reading a newspaper. That's one of the many ergonomic improvements that help me stay alive.
- fhennig 7y ago
  Yes, I think that's the sanest choice. Also doesn't require a lot of theming (and some applications don't have themes) or other weird stuff (inverting colors on pdfs?). Also reducing the backlight saves battery. But I still think that a little bit more low-contrast would be nice.
vecplane 7y ago
Dark mode is my favorite and I appreciate more apps and websites adding support. Recently I've seen Slack and Perforce finally get official dark themes. For websites that don't have good dark themes or user styles, you can use the Dark Reader browser extension to toggle it on any website - https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/
jbritton 7y ago
Black text on white background may lead to myopia and white text on black background may be preventive. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Light mode and mouth breather are the same
antonyh 7y ago
Dark mode turns laptops into mirrors, especially if they are glossy. Any office that has overhead tube lights is a poor match for dark mode apps. I even go with light terminal schemes in this case, and I have a strong preference towards dark console apps. It's even worse with laptops where screens are angled slightly towards the ceiling. Same goes with IDEs - I use dark in the evening, when there's low light, and light schemes in offices - just to reduce contrast between screen and rest of world, and to eliminate mirror effects on the display. Mobile apps however, light mode all the way! I just turn the brightness down. Glowing text is painful on small screens.
dfawcus 7y ago
Or for the Mac, just leave the machine in normal mode, and use the "invert colours" hotkey. I've been doing that for years.
ncmncm 7y ago
Translated to actual, y'know, facts, 95% of people don't change Discord from the default, before most stop using it at all. This has exactly zero usefulness as an measure of what any group (even Discord users) prefers.
ww520 7y ago
System wide dark mode theme is only a recent thing. Browsers only recently added support for prefers-color-scheme to allow web pages to query system theme.
mark-r 7y ago
Anybody else find it ironic that this revelation was made on a blog with black text on a white background?
antonyh 7y ago
Instant 'dark mode' bookmarklet / scriptlet: javascript:(function(){body=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];body.style.backgroundColor='black';body.style.filter='invert(100%)';})(); If only I could work out how to stop it from inverting the images too....
- jraph 7y ago
  Maybe you can apply the invert property on images too? But you might be interested in these browser extensions: - Dark Reader - Dark Background and Light Text
Justsignedup 7y ago
The funny thing is that Dark vs Light mode is actually not an absolute. Personally I prefer dark modes. Currently I use light modes. Why? Because when there is a possibility of glare, light mode dominates. By far. At work there is a high probability of glare. My quality of life improved drastically when I switched to light mode for everything. Even my terminal. When the room is dark, dark mode is way easier on the eyes. So really what we need isn't one preference, but a variation based on lighting conditions of the room. A color sensor on the monitor could easily determine which of the two to use. Not practical ATM. Oh well.
Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
I wonder if there's a correlation between how lit people's environments are and their dark/light mode preference. I usually prefer light themes, and I keep my computer room pretty well lit and I never use my phone in bed, so I never find light themes to be blinding. The brightness of the screen matches my environment.
kohtatsu 7y ago
Does anyone have an iOS Hacker News app that respects the iOS dark mode setting?
thrax 7y ago
The first Macintosh UI was kinda the backlash to the default night mode of the original dos boxes.
makecheck 7y ago
The main problem with this being a “mode” is that I don’t want it in 100% of cases. For instance, on the Mac it was originally possible to darken only the menu bar but now that is only allowed if everything is dark. Frankly, in many cases it makes more sense to mix these effects, e.g. it might also be nice to have darkened sidebars in lighter windows. Another reason I don’t want it on all the time is because a lot of things still have really terrible Dark themes, to the point of being eyesores. It is amazing how much more the choice of colors matters in dark themes, and if this is wrong it is almost unusable. Some web sites had long used primarily-light or primarily-dark themes, and it is now weird that some of them try to “adapt” to your dark/light “mode”. Frankly, it usually looks worse when they switch to their less-refined alternative and I would rather they either put a lot more effort in to both themes or just keep the original look in all cases.
cryptos 7y ago
Light themes are superior from a usability standpoint: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-color-theme-is-better-for-the-eyes https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-c...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
boyadjian 7y ago
It's not a problem of dark or light. It's a problem that choosing white @ 6500 K as background color is perfectly stupid. Default backgrounds for windows and internet sites should be sepia. That's what do Amazon with Kindle software, very successfully.
tmm84 7y ago
I think most tend to want dark mode because as humans a sea of white or some off shade of white requires so much attention from our brains to constantly scan/identify things that stand out (much like a blinking red button). I try to use light yellow/orange/brown and depending on overcast/night I'll switch to a shade of purple/green. I can't stand super dark themes.

241 points by burtonator 7y ago

As long as there's a choice between dark and light mode I'm happy. Heck I don't even really need a customizable interface color setup anymore, I've given up on that. IMHO "Hot Dog Stand" on Windows 3.1 was the best it could ever be. Dear god don't let Hot Dog Stand be the default.

peterwwillis 7y ago

Can someone post some links to studies? I remember reading that your screen brightness should be close to the ambient light level, and it does help my eyes when I do that adjustment, but I don't know why. White screen = brighter screen, so dark screens at night would make a less-bright screen, and vice versa, which seems to back up the theory.

zeroxx1986 7y ago

The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark Mode with BLACK MODE (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - is really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast. I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the dark mode (which is BLACK MODE).

mixmastamyk 7y ago

In the old days, apps simply used the system color scheme. That allowed one to globally choose what they wanted. Now everyone has to implement light and dark “skinz.” Color me not impressed.

dtech 7y ago
Users also expect prettier designs than the standard GUI widgets from the OS nowadays. Custom themes also could lead to ugly visuals in apps and accessibility problems.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Not really. Designers expect prettier designs than standard GUI widgets, I'm not convinced users have ever wanted non-standard widgets. In fact, more than a decade of bitching-about-java has taught me that users hate non-native widgets. But hey, developers love them so fuck users. Native widgets play significantly better with all accessibility tools, in part because native widgets are so customizable. You didn't need bespoke "Dark Mode" that was some designer's wet dream of what an interface should look like, you could just customize your widgets for what you needed: https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea/tumblr_mwjaieyign1t2as4so5_1280.png https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea...
- myu701 7y ago
  Do they though? I've had several family members buy Windows 10 PCs and they specifically requested I 'install Windows XP on it' (install Classic shell + a few other utilities to make the shell look more like Luna or Aero depending on the requestor) I'd say users expect things to look like what they are used to, whatever that user-specific preference is. Anecdotes not data etc.

zeroxx1986 7y ago

The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark mode with BLACK mode (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - is really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast. I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the Dark mode (which is, again, BLACK mode in reality).

mjevans 7y ago
Contrast can stay, for me "dark mode" or 'night theme' is about reducing the overall luminous intensity. My own belief is that when a sea of white is removed the need for 'crisp black' to stand out against it is also reduced; this might relate to a different perceived contrast due to the lowered noise floor (far less photons being rejected, so it's easier to pick out the desired ones).
stephenr 7y ago
I don’t use any of those apps but I concur with the point: dark mode that benefits the eye doesn’t use a black background. Which of course contrasts with the “dark mode” for OLED devices, which do use black. “Good” implementations I’ve seen allow a couple of choices.
WorldMaker 7y ago
At least some of us prefer a Dark mode that especially uses real black in backgrounds because of OLED and other HDR screens. Real black on many OLED devices is an entirely unlit pixel. That's very plainly less light being forced at your eyes from that screen, and absolutely will reduce certain forms of eye strain. Black backgrounds literally fade into the background of the screen. Grays and dark grays don't do that, they need at least a little lighting. As with almost all aesthetic preferences, your mileage and your hardware may vary.
7y ago

acheron 7y ago

Take note, web designers.

Shank 7y ago

I'm definitely in the camp that light / dark mode should match the time of day or ambient light level. I love having "light mode" in the morning, but at night I always prefer dark mode. But this is because I have a huge amount of ambient light in the room in the day, and at night I have none. Dark mode is unreadable to me when the bright sun is shining on a monitor. Not so with light mode.

dep_b 7y ago

I find default dark mode all of the day super depressing but later at night I find it easier to use with the lights out. So the balance iOS uses for auto enabling dark mode to me is pretty good. It would be nice if more websites would allow me to use it but at least reader mode supports it.

heavymark 7y ago

URL goes to Localhost, assuming they meant o have https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-Default-With-95-Percent-Preferring-it-Over-Light-Mode.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-D...

cygned 7y ago
The canonical URL in the meta data is wrong, points to localhost:4000.

USNetizen 7y ago

Am I the only one where "dark mode" interfaces really screw with the eyes?

wrs 7y ago
No, you are not. :) People have been looking at dark words on white paper for quite a while now with no ill effects, and I’ve never felt an inclination to invert the relationship. Even in 1980 I preferred the very few CRT terminals that operated in “light mode”.

api 7y ago

I think the rise of dark mode is mostly related to really good displays. Dark mode looks like shit on CRTs and even older flat panels with poor contrast.

tonyjstark 7y ago
OTOH, nowadays most displays are glary and dark mode in a non-dark environment lets these display act as a mirror. As a cynic I assume we live in a time of narcissistic personality disorder ;) With the bright mode I can reduce the brightness of my screens and I can still read everything. I also never have the urge to put dark-mode code on presentation slides that are unreadable in all but perfect condition.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
And OLEDs in particular, where black stops transmitting light at all. (And saves power, too.)
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Plus you can't burn in what you didn't turn on.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    But you can burn in the turned on pixels can't you? Do the LEDs lose luminance with age?
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      They do sadly, which is why you wanna keep them off, or I suppose burn them all out at the same rate. I know my OLED TV actually does a burn-in balancing once I turn it off.
- hinkley 7y ago
  An OLED and a dark default would probably also reduce insomnia. I don't know about you guys, but Night Shift at max setting is still too blue for me. I end up turning the brightness down. I just need to switch to dark.

coldcode 7y ago

95% of what people? I know people of both persuasions in about equal numbers, which makes me question the 95% number. Personally I hate dark mode except late at night as staring at a dark screen and then walking away from my desk makes me dizzy.

burtonator 7y ago
I talk about it in the post but it was Discord users but also the users of Polar. They prefer dark mode and it is one of our top requested features. I'd love to see more data though.
wolco 7y ago
This isn't 95% of the population. This is 95% prefer dark becausw the light version is awful. More of a click-bait title than necessary. 95% of discord users prefer dark would be more accurate.

zepto 7y ago

This could easily just be a fashion trend.

whack 7y ago

It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society. I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an overcast day, whereas light mode feels like a bright sunny day. I've noticed that most techies do prefer dark mode, and I also recall reading that techies are disproportionately night owls - I wonder if there's a correlation there. I suspect though that this preference is reversed for the general population.

jolmg 7y ago
If system-wide themes really worked, I'd probably be switching now and then between light and dark themes. Dark mode is kind of gloomy but it's also easier on the eyes.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  System wide themes used to work, and we didn't need an explicit Dark Mode because of it. Sadly, computer interfaces have regressed significantly from 1995.
- jiofih 7y ago
  Latest releases of MacOS (and iOS) have it, and you can even set it to go into dark mode automatically at night.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Well, I meant something with more freedom of styling, not just some established light and dark theme. Like change the colors of system-wide buttons, text inputs, window title-bars, tabs, etc. Change the system-wide accenting color to Red, Blue, Green, Gold, etc.
    - jiofih 7y ago

Razengan 7y ago

I wish HN would get a dark mode, and I don’t know why major apps like WhatsApp etc. are still dragging their asses over dark mode support while smaller apps with more complex UIs have already supported it for months.

vidarh 7y ago
There are plenty of user-written styles that will give you a dark HN. I'm using this one [1] right now, using Stylus[2] (Chrome extension) to apply it. [1] https://userstyles.org/styles/22794/a-dark-hacker-news https://userstyles.org/styles/22794/a-dark-hacker-news [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...
- _-_T_-_ 7y ago
  Cool, TIL - thank you
dewey 7y ago
Maybe because the small apps have a very targeted audience that enjoys dark mode. If you ask 10 random people on the street only 1 will probably know what “dark mode” is or would think about actively switching to it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Dark mode is a talking point for both iOS and Android imo.
the_pwner224 7y ago
You can use the Dark Reader extension for Firefox on computers & Android, which makes all sites dark, or the Stylus extension which allows you to load custom site-specific stylesheets. Stylus allows access to a big repository of community-made themes and there are surely some dark ones for HN. These both are likely also available for Chrome.

peterfisher 7y ago

this is frustrating because I have diplopia and so my life looks like: https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png when you have white text on a black background. This affect doesn't happen on "light" mode systems...

rightbyte 7y ago
Funny. I thought that's how bright on dark text looked for everyone. Couldn't see the shadow until I tilted the screen. Do I have diplopia or do people with diplopia see more of the effect?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I just switched back and forth from vi in my terminal to that image a couple of times. I see the blurring on that image immediately, every time. I don't see anything like that on the terminal.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
b3kart 7y ago
As a person with an eye condition that also makes things look like that (and worse), it took me a while to see what's wrong with this image.

ilikehurdles 7y ago

While I also prefer dark mode overall, the majority of dark editor color schemes strain my eyes more than light ones. Primarily this is because they use really bright saturated colors or solid white text on dark backgrounds, which makes my eyes strain as if they are looking at LED headlights during a night drive. OS X uses nice muted yet distinct colors on both ends of the brightness spectrum. I wish I could find an IntelliJ theme that matches the same spirit.

burtonator 7y ago
Yes. SOLID white #ffffff on black #000000 is a rough scheme. The whites need to be muted a bit so they're light grey basically.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I used grey on black for many years but recently switched to pure white. It is much easier to read. I have my monitors set fairly dim, about 120cd/m^2. This is what most colorspaces expect the whitepoint to be, but it is very dim compared to the maximum amount of light a monitor can put out. It is about 12/100 on my monitor. https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor-brightness-is-recommended/ https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor-brightn... Anyway, my point here is that #ffffff is not any sort of color you can see, merely a number that represents the maximum possible amount of red, green, and blue. If that's too much light, you can turn it down. You can also play with gamma curves to change the relative intensities down to pure black. Some people use 2.2 in dark rooms and 2.4 for "normal" indoor illumination.
jfaat 7y ago
I've been a huge fan of tomorrow night eighties for the same reason. You may like it too. example: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme/master/Images/Tomorrow-Night-Eighties.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Them... JetBrains compatible version: https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/JetBrains https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/J...
alpaca128 7y ago

imdsm 7y ago

I am the 5%

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kleer001 7y ago

Personally I can't stand dark mode. It literally hurts my eyes. Strain after a few moments and interlacing ghost lines that linger in my vision for a minute. Does anyone else have this? Is it brain cancer?! edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer. Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.

jrockway 7y ago
It's not brain cancer but rather an artifact of how the eye/brain system works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage
- kleer001 7y ago
  Honestly, that's more of what I think. I figure I get a higher activation of my edge detection neurons. Somehow.
__s 7y ago
It's not brain cancer
- eknkc 7y ago
  Everything is brain cancer if you look it up online.
branko_d 7y ago
I have exactly the same experience.
butz 7y ago
Same here too.
benji_is_me 7y ago
Dark mode makes me tired, I think. I don't mind normal black text on a white background.
7y ago

dpcan 7y ago

I don't know many people my age who can still handle dark mode. It was easy for me many years ago. I looked at command lines all day and no problem. Now I see blurry lines for 10 minutes all around me if I have to spend any length of time in a command line interface, or look at an article in dark mode. This is, unfortunately, an accessibility issue, not a design issue.

robotron 7y ago
I'm older, my eyes are getting pretty bad, and I have to have dark mode. This is why data on this is important.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Much of it depends on the room you’re in currently.
- burtonator 7y ago
  I'm the same way... 42 now and my eyes aren't the same. Definitely macular degeneration. Dark mode really helps me.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  I'd say this is why we need software to respect accessibility and configurability. We didn't need "Dark Mode" in Windows 95 because we could configure the crap out of our native widgets. Then using the web as an application platform became a thing, accessibility was jettisoned in the name of "muh design!" and all personal computing has suffered for it.
- z92 7y ago
  Second this. Aged. Dark mode and command prompt is less tiresome on eye than white.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
I'm older and I prefer dark mode, whether for CLI or GUI. It reduces eyestrain for me.

AlexandrB 7y ago

People like novelty. Dark mode is something new in UX design. I'm not sure I'd read into it any more than that until a few more years pass.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
New? Never used DOS, a terminal, or a custom dark theme on Windows XP?
jolmg 7y ago
Dark mode toggles in applications and websites is kind of new (not really, but it's been popularized recently), but system-wide theming with dark themes has been around for a long time.
dageshi 7y ago
Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens and to greater and lesser extent everybody spends lots of time infront of screens nowadays. That being said, I have pretty good luck with browser plugins that auto dark mode websites reasonably well. I'm not sure I'd go redesigning the entire web with darkmodes in mind when plugins can do a good enough job.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens For some people, yes. For others, no. That's why this should be a configurable option.
- b3kart 7y ago
  > Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens [citation needed]. Why do people keep making these general statements. Every time they do counter-examples immediately appear in replies. Why can't we all agree that we're all different and it's largely a matter of preference.
pixelbash 7y ago
I wouldn't be so sure, I used dark mode winamp and litestep themes back in the winxp days. It could have originally been that crt white was not that nice, but I still find a largely white lcd screen a bit much.

120bits 7y ago

I have using VI for years now and I prefer black background with green text, and I'm sure most people do. When I transitioned over to a modern IDE Atom/Code/Sublime, the first thing I wanted was to have a decent dark theme. I did try few of them but it was hard on my eyes(maybe because my eyes have adjusted to what I have been looking at for years) I finally settled on Code editor and its been ok so far.

roland35 7y ago
Badwolf is my personal favorite dark theme: a nice black with orange and red.

memossy 7y ago

Left shift + left alt + PrtSc = dark mode for word and all sorts via high contrast mode on Windows

void445be54d48a 7y ago
High contrast mode is not dark mode.
- antonyh 7y ago
  It makes web pages like HN dark (in FF). I don't get why it takes so long to do it though, so toggling it is frustrating, and the side effects are pretty horrific as it throws boxes around everything.

agigao 7y ago

Nope.

vsyu 7y ago

I heard dark mode might not actually help in terms of being easier on the eyes?

wenc 7y ago

I like dark mode -- it has a sleek aesthetic. The only time dark mode is bad is when you're doing a product demo in a darkened room, like at a conference. It's really hard to make out text in dark mode in a dark room.

CharlesW 7y ago

It's novel right now, just as dark-on-light displays were novel when Lisa and Macintosh were introduced. Also, I suspect nostalgia (or anemoia) is involved. However, research shows that dark-on-light (positive polarity) displays are better for most people most of the time, with some exceptions. For those who want to go deeper, several studies and papers are cited in the article The Dark Side of Dark Mode: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/

clumsysmurf 7y ago
I have cataracts just outside the center of my vision, and they are more visible against a white background. For this reason I prefer dark mode, as they are not visible, they just distort.

emptybottle 7y ago

Ironic that this article was published on a website that doesn't use dark mode.

sekou 7y ago

Are there any efforts to standardize a way to default to a dark color scheme if a website has it?

fanf2 7y ago
The prefers-color-scheme media query https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I switch back and forth from time to time. For a while I like dark until I get bored with it. Then I switch to light until I get bored.

rayascott 7y ago

I don't like dark mode.

oblib 7y ago

I only have a few apps on my old Mac that have a dark mode UI. Pixelmator is one of them and the small tool windows blend into each other and it's hard for me to discern their boundaries. And I strain with the tiny text on them. I really wish it had an option to turn that off and rarely use it because I can't. I don't like it at all. Makes me wonder if it's because I'm getting old and my vision isn't aa sharp as it used to be. My main monitor has a "low blue light" setting that I do like though. It took me a bit to get used to it but I can really feel the difference if I turn it off now. I've since adjusted my two peripheral monitors to lower the blue light settings and that's helped reduce eye strain a lot for me.

crazygringo 7y ago

Dark mode is great when you're using a screen casually close to bedtime and don't want a painful bright light. It's also great when you're doing image or video editing and need to be able to see full contrast in the dark areas, without being overwhemlmed by bright light surrounding. But it's objectively far worse if you're reading significant amounts of text, for the simple optical reason that light bleeds inside of lenses, including in your eyes -- that white "pollutes" black but not vice-versa. Thus with black-on-white text, letterforms stay separate, clear, and legible. Any light spreading simply makes the letterforms appear, say, at 10% brightness instead of 0% brightness. Zero problems with legibility, still plenty of contrast. But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. Now granted, if you're 15 years old with perfect vision, it may not be particularly noticeable or objectionable. But the older you get or worse eyesight you have, the more it becomes a big problem. So dark mode is nice to have, but for most apps going dark-only is objectively bad for accessibility, and legibility generally.

dustyfence 7y ago
I second this
jeromenerf 7y ago
Pixmap / raster fonts, with no antialiasing, at a somewhat large size are great light on dark. White on dark with fuzzy fonts on non hidpi screens is terrible indeed.
Izkata 7y ago
> But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. I, uh, don't see a halo. Never have. I see streaks/starbursts, kinda like this quora post [0], except I've seen streetlights like that my whole life (so I don't think it's an eye problem like they suggest). Maybe that influences why I find dark mode easier on the eyes? No blurring, but it's also not sharp enough to cause the starburst. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-light-I-see-whenever-I-stare-at-a-bright-light-at-night https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-ligh...

ConcernedCoder 7y ago

I was told long ago in the newspaper business that "dark mode" ( background darker than foreground ) was unprofessional / hacker looking, and "light mode" ( background lighter than foreground ) was the opposite, and I wonder if that generality still holds true in the corporate world?

JohnFen 7y ago

I hate dark modes, but I don't actually care what the default is -- as long as I can still set a light mode.

petercooper 7y ago

I far prefer dark mode for "chrome" and OS theming, etc. but not for documents. So the idea that just because I have dark mode selected means I want every site to look like a porn site and my emails to all have back backgrounds is very wrong. I want normal documents, just as they were, but with a dark theme around them.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

It really depends on the environment the program is developed in. I have seen guis for autmation, that was developed in glasshouse skyscrapers- and was light as hell, and then developed to dimly lit factories, who have to look at this searchlight of a screen during the nightshift. Praise be on windows, for allowing to invert colours (High contrast themes).

tomatsu 7y ago

I prefer light mode + f.lux or Redshift. There's no need to stare at cold blue light all day long. Fun fact, there is actually a CSS media query for selecting dark/light themes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...

acd 7y ago

I prefer light mode by default. I think there should be an os level setting if you prefer dark or light mode. And yes there is a certain level of fashion between dark and light mode which seems to move back and forwards every now and then. This reminds me somehow of the moves between Terminal(thin) -> Server(thick) to Workstation(thick) -> Tablet(Thin) -> Cloud(Thick) -> Client side(Thick).

rammy1234 7y ago

When you open your app, It says we collect cookies for feature usage. There is only one button "Accept". Where is this button called "Decline" ?

IronWolve 7y ago

Been using dark reader addon in both chrome/firefox, and love it. Bright white in the eyes when your trying to relax and read is amazingly offensive. I use it on HackerNews too.

acheron 7y ago
Thanks for this recommendation. Just installed it.

mmanfrin 7y ago

I wish I could make the general internet dark mode (and I've tried extensions, they don't work all that well). Give me a dark mode HN. White backgrounds hurt my eyes. I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day, let me reduce some of that strain.

b3kart 7y ago
> I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day I wonder why white backgrounds hurt your eyes...

gwern 7y ago

This seems like something where 'cheap talk' is a serious problem. You're not even surveying or polling users, you're hearing from self-selected ones. And even if you get a representative sample, what people say is different from what they do: users may not even know if they genuinely prefer it. Lots of design is subconscious, and there are measurable effects like additional milliseconds in loadtime where I doubt anyone would ordinarily be able to notice without sitting down with a stopwatch - it just feels worse. If it is really impossible to support more than one theme in the long run, this seems like a perfect use-case for an A/B test: randomize half your users into dark-mode and half into light-mode, and track total attrition and activity over the next few months (and not some proxy variable, switching to dark mode is too important to use some unreliable intermediate measurement).

gyrfalcon 7y ago

When does Hacker News get a darkmode then? :-)

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

The recent trend of introducing separate "light" and "dark" modes is a band-aid solution to the larger problem: modern interfaces lack contrast. Everything is either mostly-bright or mostly-dark, and I find both physically tiring. I was playing around with a virtualized copy of Snow Leopard last weekend. Coming from modern macOS, what I find most visually striking is always the range of tones. The beautifully deep gray window chrome fades into the background, and pushes white content to the forefront without rendering it blindingly bright. Colored accents on interactable elements make the interface easy to scan. When I squint, I can still see everything. You'd never consider adding a dark mode to this interface—or at least, I personally can't imagine what one would look like, because the interface is neither light nor dark to begin with. The result is far easier on my eyes.

crazygringo 7y ago
That's a great point -- before Microsoft introduced "flat design" which everyone else then copied (both Apple and Google), there was both a lot more variation in background colors and varied usage of color generally. I understand and sympathize with the philosophy behind flat design -- that it intentionally puts the interface in the background (low contrast, less variation), so whatever content you're consuming (photos, videos, book text) is the focus. But I also sympathize with your point -- that when you want to use the interface to do stuff rather than merely scroll through content, it's simply harder now.

NauticalStu 7y ago

I wish there were more "medium" themes. I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer. I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal. My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha. https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visual-studio https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visua...

bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
I like Gruvbox for the same reason

eddyg 7y ago

The Dark Side of Dark Mode https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/ "To summarize, a dark-on-light (positive polarity) display like a Mac in 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. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes"

excalibur 7y ago

I immediately thought of this article: https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it-out-there-fuck-dark-mode-sucks-worst-awful/ https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it-ou... Just putting it out there: Fuck Callum Booth's opinion.

unglaublich 7y ago

After trying both light and dark themed interfaces for a few years, I concluded that for me there's only one setup that works: light theme with low brightness (monitor setting) and 'flux'/'night light'. That way, my monitor looks just like everything else in my office, like reading a newspaper. That's one of the many ergonomic improvements that help me stay alive.

fhennig 7y ago
Yes, I think that's the sanest choice. Also doesn't require a lot of theming (and some applications don't have themes) or other weird stuff (inverting colors on pdfs?). Also reducing the backlight saves battery. But I still think that a little bit more low-contrast would be nice.

vecplane 7y ago

Dark mode is my favorite and I appreciate more apps and websites adding support. Recently I've seen Slack and Perforce finally get official dark themes. For websites that don't have good dark themes or user styles, you can use the Dark Reader browser extension to toggle it on any website - https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/

jbritton 7y ago

Black text on white background may lead to myopia and white text on black background may be preventive. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Light mode and mouth breather are the same

antonyh 7y ago

Dark mode turns laptops into mirrors, especially if they are glossy. Any office that has overhead tube lights is a poor match for dark mode apps. I even go with light terminal schemes in this case, and I have a strong preference towards dark console apps. It's even worse with laptops where screens are angled slightly towards the ceiling. Same goes with IDEs - I use dark in the evening, when there's low light, and light schemes in offices - just to reduce contrast between screen and rest of world, and to eliminate mirror effects on the display. Mobile apps however, light mode all the way! I just turn the brightness down. Glowing text is painful on small screens.

dfawcus 7y ago

Or for the Mac, just leave the machine in normal mode, and use the "invert colours" hotkey. I've been doing that for years.

ncmncm 7y ago

Translated to actual, y'know, facts, 95% of people don't change Discord from the default, before most stop using it at all. This has exactly zero usefulness as an measure of what any group (even Discord users) prefers.

ww520 7y ago

System wide dark mode theme is only a recent thing. Browsers only recently added support for prefers-color-scheme to allow web pages to query system theme.

mark-r 7y ago

Anybody else find it ironic that this revelation was made on a blog with black text on a white background?

antonyh 7y ago

Instant 'dark mode' bookmarklet / scriptlet: javascript:(function(){body=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];body.style.backgroundColor='black';body.style.filter='invert(100%)';})(); If only I could work out how to stop it from inverting the images too....

jraph 7y ago
Maybe you can apply the invert property on images too? But you might be interested in these browser extensions: - Dark Reader - Dark Background and Light Text

Justsignedup 7y ago

The funny thing is that Dark vs Light mode is actually not an absolute. Personally I prefer dark modes. Currently I use light modes. Why? Because when there is a possibility of glare, light mode dominates. By far. At work there is a high probability of glare. My quality of life improved drastically when I switched to light mode for everything. Even my terminal. When the room is dark, dark mode is way easier on the eyes. So really what we need isn't one preference, but a variation based on lighting conditions of the room. A color sensor on the monitor could easily determine which of the two to use. Not practical ATM. Oh well.

Sohcahtoa82 7y ago

I wonder if there's a correlation between how lit people's environments are and their dark/light mode preference. I usually prefer light themes, and I keep my computer room pretty well lit and I never use my phone in bed, so I never find light themes to be blinding. The brightness of the screen matches my environment.

kohtatsu 7y ago

Does anyone have an iOS Hacker News app that respects the iOS dark mode setting?

thrax 7y ago

The first Macintosh UI was kinda the backlash to the default night mode of the original dos boxes.

makecheck 7y ago

The main problem with this being a “mode” is that I don’t want it in 100% of cases. For instance, on the Mac it was originally possible to darken only the menu bar but now that is only allowed if everything is dark. Frankly, in many cases it makes more sense to mix these effects, e.g. it might also be nice to have darkened sidebars in lighter windows. Another reason I don’t want it on all the time is because a lot of things still have really terrible Dark themes, to the point of being eyesores. It is amazing how much more the choice of colors matters in dark themes, and if this is wrong it is almost unusable. Some web sites had long used primarily-light or primarily-dark themes, and it is now weird that some of them try to “adapt” to your dark/light “mode”. Frankly, it usually looks worse when they switch to their less-refined alternative and I would rather they either put a lot more effort in to both themes or just keep the original look in all cases.

cryptos 7y ago

Light themes are superior from a usability standpoint: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-color-theme-is-better-for-the-eyes https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-c...

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boyadjian 7y ago

It's not a problem of dark or light. It's a problem that choosing white @ 6500 K as background color is perfectly stupid. Default backgrounds for windows and internet sites should be sepia. That's what do Amazon with Kindle software, very successfully.

tmm84 7y ago

I think most tend to want dark mode because as humans a sea of white or some off shade of white requires so much attention from our brains to constantly scan/identify things that stand out (much like a blinking red button). I try to use light yellow/orange/brown and depending on overcast/night I'll switch to a shade of purple/green. I can't stand super dark themes.