7 ms·

Dark Mode vs. Light Mode

51 points by colinprince 7y ago

Proziam 7y ago
I have perfect eyesight and I have to say that I'm very happy dark mode has become more popular. Light mode straight up hurts my eyes, even with the screen brightness turned down, and even in an already fairly bright environment. It seems totally obvious that there are people who benefit from both options, so the fact it took as long as it did for this trend to become more commonplace is really odd to me.
- account42 7y ago
  I was fine with using light mode on a single 24" screen switched to dark mode once I got a 38" ultrawide - there is just no way I am staring at a mostly white screen of that size for all day.
Kuinox 7y ago
From personal experience, under correct lightning, there is no issue with light mode. But when the external lightning is bad (too high/low), dark mode is easier on the eyes. The only exception, is when i got 3 screen, and one is in light mod, and 2 other in dark mode. It just hurt.
- vladvasiliu 7y ago
  This is also my biggest issue with dark mode: not everything is dark mode. I find light mode to be more tiring than the dark mode when using a high resolution screen, as text is often extremely skinny. However, as not everything is in dark mode, for example web sites, I find it extremely bothering to switch from one to the other.
chooseaname 7y ago
While light mode strains my eyes due to the brightness of it, I still prefer it to dark mode because designers use blue for text and accents. I really wish we could choose the text/accent color.
deweller 7y ago
Somewhat off topic, but has someone created a dark mode stylesheet or viewer for Hacker News?
- gppk 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239
- rat9988 7y ago
  Install stylus on your browser and look for a hacker news dark mode.
  - rozab 7y ago
    +1 for Stylus. I've gotten into the habit of fixing little things in most sites I visit regularly, and it's made my browsing experience much nicer.
- danmaz74 7y ago
  On Chrome, I use the Dark Reader extension. Works perfectly well with HN, and I use it with many, many other websites.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- poisonborz 7y ago
  Instead doing this on a site-by-site basis, consider using an extension like DarkReader (for mobile, some chromium Android browsers and also Firefox Preview allow extensions). It degrades performance a bit, a small fraction of sites look broken by it (can selectively disable), but its a huge boon overall.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Dark Reader for Firefox seems to work only some of the time. I ended up disabling it.
postalrat 7y ago
Using dark mode tends to make light mode hurt my eyes. So I tend to avoid it and stick with light mode.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  I do the reverse for the same reason
amriksohata 7y ago
Just use light mode and change your IDE background to a very light grey, win win. Like the way HN has a beige background
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? Why has the GUI so dramatically regressed from 1995?
- ashtonbaker 7y ago
  Because Apple realized that the visual appearance of the OSX desktop is an aspect of their brand, and every person working on a MacBook in a coffee shop is a public billboard which needs to adhere to brand standards.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Windows has similar restrictions.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      How so? I've been a windows developer for over a decade and I'm not aware of any.
    - 1MachineElf 7y ago
      They do now, but it wasn't always like that. WindowBlinds[0] on Windows XP was extremely customizable. I remember the top community themes were usually dark and minimalist ones. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/
- simias 7y ago
  >Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? I certainly don't. Do you have a specific OS in mind? In my experience it worked as long as you only used applications that used the stock UI toolkit without customization. As soon as some app tries to use custom controls (or even just custom icons) it becomes messy, either because these controls won't apply the custom system theme and they'll stand out like a sore thumb or because they'll apply partially and make the control hard or impossible to see correctly. On Linux it's even worse because of the multiple UI toolkits/desktop environment available (GTK-gnome/Qt-kde/motif/wxwidgets/...) which often need to be configured independently from one another. And on top of that some applications like gvim, emacs, firefox or terminal emulators will have their own custom theme configuration that will override the global theme. I definitely understand why Apple thought it was a good idea to lock things up to give the user a consistent experience.
arriu 7y ago
A few things to call out: 1) Dark mode is increasingly not exclusively about the user experience. We're seeing phones switch automatically to dark mode when batteries are low. 2) Dark mode, at least for email, has better readability by design. The dark mode algorithm swaps foreground with background and then adjusts the colors to be at least at a ratio of 4.5 to 1 (wcag 2 compliance). This means you can have unreadable white text over white background in light mode and it will actually be readable in dark mode. So having discussions about whether dark mode is more readable is kind of pointless, it was designed to be more accessible. edit: If there is interest, I can share a desktop app that helps illustrate dark-mode changes (specifically for email). https://imgur.com/NOGT5el https://imgur.com/NOGT5el
- dasKrokodil 7y ago
  > We're seeing phones switch automatically to dark mode when batteries are low. Do phone displays really save energy when displaying more black pixels? I always thought that's not the case because the backlight is always on for the entire display anyway.
  - lucian1900 7y ago
    It has some effect for OLEDs, in which there is no backlight and dark pixels are simply off.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      Yeah, this is the quirk exploited by features on some phones like "always on display" to be remotely viable battery-wise. They still eat into your battery but because the screen is mostly black and the on-screen elements are dim + infrequently updated, you can leave it enabled and be OK.
ivanche 7y ago
Finally an explanation for my case! I have both astigmatism and myopia. I never understood why dark mode is so popular because to me it's unreadable. Even worse, sites with black background and white text are downright hurtful - after 20-30 seconds I start seeing just horizontal white stripes moving very fast up and down on black background.
- AdmiralGinge 7y ago
  I'm the other way round, I have visual snow syndrome and light mode is often retina-searingly unpleasant.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  I'm astigmatic as well and I prefer dark mode over light, it's about the contrast for me (or lack) though, I like somewhat bright text on dark backgrounds.
brundolf 7y ago
I've always had good vision so maybe I'm biased, but I've never noticed a difference in readability between the two. And if my display is >50% brightness and I'm not under direct sunlight, and I'm using Light Mode, I usually get a headache. In fact, in dark mode, because I'm not going to get a headache, I can generally turn the brightness up more, making for better contrast and readability. It would be interesting to see a study where they factored that in. All of that said: we added dark mode to our app at work and my manager (who's older) commented offhand that he could read things much better in light mode. That was the first inkling I'd ever gotten that it was actually more effective for anybody. I'd thought it was just an aesthetic preference. Anyway, it's as easy as it's ever been to support both, which I did when I recently rebuilt my personal website: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref... https://www.brandonsmith.ninja/ https://www.brandonsmith.ninja/
- 1MachineElf 7y ago
  Interesting feature in Reddit's mobile app is switching between light and dark modes through the day/night. That approach could get your app the best of both worlds.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Waze and most of the sat nav apps I use on my phone have that as well. It definitely helps when trying to see a 6" screen on a motorbike at night in rain not to blinded by what's effectively a torch in your sightline.
    - 1MachineElf 7y ago
      Not only do Waze and other sat nav apps do that based on the time of day - they often also do it based on whether or not your are driving through a dark underground tunnel.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    The best thing to do is to hook into the system-level preference, which all major OSes have now. From there the user can usually opt to have the system-wide theme change based on time of day if that's what they want.
dzonga 7y ago
personally, for me eye strain is less when I use light mode. Hence everything has been default light mode, for the past couple of months
Kaiyou 7y ago
Isn't it possible to just merge both, so you get something like this site right here?
hwdug8278 7y ago
Dark mode is the ideal display for a computer screen since it's generating light as opposed to dark ink on white paper which absorbs light.

51 points by colinprince 7y ago

I have perfect eyesight and I have to say that I'm very happy dark mode has become more popular. Light mode straight up hurts my eyes, even with the screen brightness turned down, and even in an already fairly bright environment. It seems totally obvious that there are people who benefit from both options, so the fact it took as long as it did for this trend to become more commonplace is really odd to me.

account42 7y ago
I was fine with using light mode on a single 24" screen switched to dark mode once I got a 38" ultrawide - there is just no way I am staring at a mostly white screen of that size for all day.

Kuinox 7y ago

From personal experience, under correct lightning, there is no issue with light mode. But when the external lightning is bad (too high/low), dark mode is easier on the eyes. The only exception, is when i got 3 screen, and one is in light mod, and 2 other in dark mode. It just hurt.

vladvasiliu 7y ago
This is also my biggest issue with dark mode: not everything is dark mode. I find light mode to be more tiring than the dark mode when using a high resolution screen, as text is often extremely skinny. However, as not everything is in dark mode, for example web sites, I find it extremely bothering to switch from one to the other.

chooseaname 7y ago

While light mode strains my eyes due to the brightness of it, I still prefer it to dark mode because designers use blue for text and accents. I really wish we could choose the text/accent color.

deweller 7y ago

Somewhat off topic, but has someone created a dark mode stylesheet or viewer for Hacker News?

gppk 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239
rat9988 7y ago
Install stylus on your browser and look for a hacker news dark mode.
- rozab 7y ago
  +1 for Stylus. I've gotten into the habit of fixing little things in most sites I visit regularly, and it's made my browsing experience much nicer.
danmaz74 7y ago
On Chrome, I use the Dark Reader extension. Works perfectly well with HN, and I use it with many, many other websites.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
poisonborz 7y ago
Instead doing this on a site-by-site basis, consider using an extension like DarkReader (for mobile, some chromium Android browsers and also Firefox Preview allow extensions). It degrades performance a bit, a small fraction of sites look broken by it (can selectively disable), but its a huge boon overall.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Dark Reader for Firefox seems to work only some of the time. I ended up disabling it.

postalrat 7y ago

Using dark mode tends to make light mode hurt my eyes. So I tend to avoid it and stick with light mode.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
I do the reverse for the same reason

amriksohata 7y ago

Just use light mode and change your IDE background to a very light grey, win win. Like the way HN has a beige background

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? Why has the GUI so dramatically regressed from 1995?

ashtonbaker 7y ago
Because Apple realized that the visual appearance of the OSX desktop is an aspect of their brand, and every person working on a MacBook in a coffee shop is a public billboard which needs to adhere to brand standards.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Windows has similar restrictions.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    How so? I've been a windows developer for over a decade and I'm not aware of any.
  - 1MachineElf 7y ago
    They do now, but it wasn't always like that. WindowBlinds[0] on Windows XP was extremely customizable. I remember the top community themes were usually dark and minimalist ones. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/
simias 7y ago
>Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? I certainly don't. Do you have a specific OS in mind? In my experience it worked as long as you only used applications that used the stock UI toolkit without customization. As soon as some app tries to use custom controls (or even just custom icons) it becomes messy, either because these controls won't apply the custom system theme and they'll stand out like a sore thumb or because they'll apply partially and make the control hard or impossible to see correctly. On Linux it's even worse because of the multiple UI toolkits/desktop environment available (GTK-gnome/Qt-kde/motif/wxwidgets/...) which often need to be configured independently from one another. And on top of that some applications like gvim, emacs, firefox or terminal emulators will have their own custom theme configuration that will override the global theme. I definitely understand why Apple thought it was a good idea to lock things up to give the user a consistent experience.

arriu 7y ago

A few things to call out: 1) Dark mode is increasingly not exclusively about the user experience. We're seeing phones switch automatically to dark mode when batteries are low. 2) Dark mode, at least for email, has better readability by design. The dark mode algorithm swaps foreground with background and then adjusts the colors to be at least at a ratio of 4.5 to 1 (wcag 2 compliance). This means you can have unreadable white text over white background in light mode and it will actually be readable in dark mode. So having discussions about whether dark mode is more readable is kind of pointless, it was designed to be more accessible. edit: If there is interest, I can share a desktop app that helps illustrate dark-mode changes (specifically for email). https://imgur.com/NOGT5el https://imgur.com/NOGT5el

dasKrokodil 7y ago
> We're seeing phones switch automatically to dark mode when batteries are low. Do phone displays really save energy when displaying more black pixels? I always thought that's not the case because the backlight is always on for the entire display anyway.
- lucian1900 7y ago
  It has some effect for OLEDs, in which there is no backlight and dark pixels are simply off.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    Yeah, this is the quirk exploited by features on some phones like "always on display" to be remotely viable battery-wise. They still eat into your battery but because the screen is mostly black and the on-screen elements are dim + infrequently updated, you can leave it enabled and be OK.

ivanche 7y ago

Finally an explanation for my case! I have both astigmatism and myopia. I never understood why dark mode is so popular because to me it's unreadable. Even worse, sites with black background and white text are downright hurtful - after 20-30 seconds I start seeing just horizontal white stripes moving very fast up and down on black background.

AdmiralGinge 7y ago
I'm the other way round, I have visual snow syndrome and light mode is often retina-searingly unpleasant.
noir_lord 7y ago
I'm astigmatic as well and I prefer dark mode over light, it's about the contrast for me (or lack) though, I like somewhat bright text on dark backgrounds.

brundolf 7y ago

I've always had good vision so maybe I'm biased, but I've never noticed a difference in readability between the two. And if my display is >50% brightness and I'm not under direct sunlight, and I'm using Light Mode, I usually get a headache. In fact, in dark mode, because I'm not going to get a headache, I can generally turn the brightness up more, making for better contrast and readability. It would be interesting to see a study where they factored that in. All of that said: we added dark mode to our app at work and my manager (who's older) commented offhand that he could read things much better in light mode. That was the first inkling I'd ever gotten that it was actually more effective for anybody. I'd thought it was just an aesthetic preference. Anyway, it's as easy as it's ever been to support both, which I did when I recently rebuilt my personal website: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref... https://www.brandonsmith.ninja/ https://www.brandonsmith.ninja/

1MachineElf 7y ago
Interesting feature in Reddit's mobile app is switching between light and dark modes through the day/night. That approach could get your app the best of both worlds.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Waze and most of the sat nav apps I use on my phone have that as well. It definitely helps when trying to see a 6" screen on a motorbike at night in rain not to blinded by what's effectively a torch in your sightline.
  - 1MachineElf 7y ago
    Not only do Waze and other sat nav apps do that based on the time of day - they often also do it based on whether or not your are driving through a dark underground tunnel.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The best thing to do is to hook into the system-level preference, which all major OSes have now. From there the user can usually opt to have the system-wide theme change based on time of day if that's what they want.

dzonga 7y ago

personally, for me eye strain is less when I use light mode. Hence everything has been default light mode, for the past couple of months

Kaiyou 7y ago

Isn't it possible to just merge both, so you get something like this site right here?

hwdug8278 7y ago

Dark mode is the ideal display for a computer screen since it's generating light as opposed to dark ink on white paper which absorbs light.