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GitHub Releases Dark Mode
- boogies 6y agoFinally. There have been Stylus user styles forever, if GitHub was open source (like Gitea, which has dark mode enabled by default on some instances) they could have been merged in years ago.
- djstein 6y agonext up hacker news?
- gnabgib 6y agoWouldn't [the blog post)[0] be a better link then the settings panel? [0]: https://github.blog/2020-12-08-new-from-universe-2020-dark-mode-github-sponsors-for-companies-and-more/#dark-mode https://github.blog/2020-12-08-new-from-universe-2020-dark-m...
- KyleBerezin 6y agoI disagree but I am up voting so other people can see your link.
- llimos 6y agoI love how it goes to the settings panel. Kudos m1. Two clicks from the HN homepage and it's done. Informed and improved in one go!
- framecowbird 6y agoOnly if you have a GitHub account though! The link just took me to a login page...
- da_big_ghey 6y agoI think the settings link is useful too; it allowed me to click on it and immediately flip the setting in question, which was exactly what I wanted. The blog post doesn't really contain anything more than, "We have dark mode now," anyway.
- m4r35n357 6y agoIrony? The blog you linked to is in light mode, unlike the HN link.
- eric_cc 6y agoNo, settings lets me immediately try it.
- kbd 6y agoExcellent! That's one more site I can disable in Dark Reader. Edit: spoke too soon. It's not available in their enterprise edition yet. Re enables Dark Reader for corporate url.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deadmik3 6y agoNice to see but it's too contrast-y for me compared to the stylus theme I've already been using which honestly looks better https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-Dark https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-Dark
- bnt 6y agoThis feels more inline with Windows Dark Mode (since Github is a Microsoft company).
- ksec 6y agoWell since the Settings has both System Default and Dark Mode, I wish System Default would be matching closer to macOS Dark Mode which is Dark Greyish colour when user is on macOS.
- SquareWheel 6y agoSystem Default likely just infers dark mode preference via prefers-color-scheme. It doesn't seem to be a unique theme.
- abdusco 6y agoIn case anyone's interested, it's possible to schedule light and dark themes on Windows via this app: https://github.com/adrianmteo/Luna https://github.com/adrianmteo/Luna I usually prefer the dark theme but some websites detect that Windows is in dark mode (using `prefers-color-scheme: dark` in CSS) and fail to provide a way to toggle the dark theme off. This makes it difficult to read the text during daytime. Scheduling dark theme on & off and combining it with Dark Reader's automation, it's nice being able to have all websites switch to dark mode at night.
- Zarel 6y agoHow do you combine it with Dark Reader's automation? I don't see any automation option in Dark Reader. :(
- csunbird 6y agoWish HN had a dark mode setting as well.
- thrill 6y agoDammit man, I can only give you one upvote.
- flixic 6y agoGithub is now removed from my Dark Mode Safari extension. Only two sites remain: Hacker News and Wikipedia.
- lucideer 6y agoWikipedia support supplying your own custom.css which is applied whenever you're logged in. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalCssJs https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalCssJs
- MH15 6y agoThere have been some pretty solid userstyles for HN. There was a big thread about it a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 Many really good themes you can install with Stylish or whatever extension works with your browser.
- geerlingguy 6y agoBrowser extensions aren't universal, unfortunately :( I often use all of Safari, FireFox, Chrome, and maybe one or two mobile browsers in a day, and the dissonance from having different styles on the same site in different browsers is worse than having to suffer through not having dark mode for me.
- boogies 6y agoStylus should work on Firefox, Chrome, and mobile Firefox.
- thehermit 6y agoThe coloring on diffs needs some work. The green is almost invisible with dark mode enabled.
- __s 6y agoIt's fine on my screen. But yes, my experience with dark mode is that it requires a finer tuning by the user, done right it's superior to light mode, but the threshold of success is tighter You can check your gamma settings, but that's a bit of an ask if you have everything setup just right. Green line numbers are pretty indicative either way
- vultour 6y agoIt looks fine on 4 different monitors in front of me
- moretta 6y agoI think the mix of font colours is also a problem on the diffs alongside the dark green, which makes it really hard to see what's going on. I've switched back to light mode for reviewing PRs
- ExcavateGrandMa 6y agoit's not dark it's deep blue :Ð
- alphachloride 6y agoHaving tried it for a few minutes, I prefer the light theme. I also reverted back to light themes for my text editors - I felt it was easier to focus on dark-on-light text than the other way around.
- bnt 6y agoI have mild astigmatism and dark themes simply don’t work for me. macOS dark mode gives me nausea. For me it’s old school plain white IDE.
- the_other 6y agoI have about 40degree astigmatism, but also myopia. I blow hot & cold with dark mode. It’s definitely NOT the “one true way” that it seems to be for other devs. It hadn’t occurred to me that my astigmatism might affect perception in dark mode differently. I’ll look out for that. Thanks!
- baq 6y agoPaper is black on white for a reason... I never understood dark modes and my eyesight is surprisingly good (as in, no glasses needed) after staring at computer screens for a good part of past 20 years. Am I just old?
- netcraft 6y agoIs this true? that its for a reason other than its easier to make dark colored ink and to bleach paper white rather than the other way around?
- nullsense 6y agoDark mode is bad for your eyes in a light environment as it causes them to work harder. Its good in the dark though, hence the name. Its a mode that should be used in the dark. I find the whole dark mode fashion pretty unfathomable. I use it only in the dark and it's wonderful in that case, but people seem to want it on all the time for all the things.
- guptarohit 6y agoFinally! nice.
- flixic 6y agoOwners of repositories that "assumed white background" (for example, https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins), consider updating your graphics to something that is readable in both styles.
- aendruk 6y agoHere’s where SVG with prefers-color-scheme would be useful.
- momothereal 6y agoHopefully support in RefinedGithub ships soon: https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/3798 https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/3798
- srik 6y agoThe emoji skin tone customization preference is a small thing but as a POC I really appreciate it. Never knew they had it.
- CivBase 6y agoI also really appreciate the skin tone being a setting rather than having to pick the skin tone every time I select an emoji. This seems like an obvious thing, but some popular apps (cough hangouts cough) still haven't figured it out.
- racl101 6y agoAs a POC I only care about the act of having to pick one. It's a chore. I really don't care if the default is the Simpson-y yellow color. Honestly, this kind of thing is such a non issue. On the other hand, the dark theme could be kinda cool.
- sali0 6y agoI feel exactly the same. Major bike shedding in my opinion. I prefer the yellow anyway. In a way, It allows others to focus on who I am, not what I am.
- fotta 6y agoThis is one of those things where you can’t make everyone happy. Similar to “disabled person” vs. “person with disability” As a disabled POC, I personally don’t mind in either case, but also if at least one person feels more welcomed because of the change then it’s worth it in my book.
- arp242 6y agoOn the other hand, quite a lot dev time is spent in total on the whole emoji skin tone modifiers. How much dev time is it worth it to make that one person feel more welcome, and wouldn't there be other areas where this time would be better spent to make people feel more welcome?
- dpix 6y agoMaybe it's just me, but I'd rather all these tech companies that implemented dark mode over the last year or so had worked on new features or bugs instead...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1996 6y agoSticking to light mode in everything is more optimal: - light mode is often the default, so you don't have to work around it - more readable: in the daytime, in text editors, for people with astigmatism - using screen inverters like https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/ https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/ switches your whole screen to "night mode" - including the pesky details like taskbars, menu, etc, and offering you more fine control (ex: only keep the red channel) Yes, even my terminal is in light mode (Solarized light) - at night, I just press on a key which immediately invert my screen colors and only preserve the red channels. No tweaking with a zillion apps to get them "dark". In the day time, I press on the key again and keep going with all the applications now "light".
- joseluisq 6y agoThe Dark mode sucks and gives a big eye strain. I prefer to use the light one and let better dark-mode alternatives for my editor.
- Raidion 6y agoI think the only thing that remains blindingly white is now JIRA. Slack, github, and code editors support dark themes. Anyone know of a good mySQL editor that supports dark themes?
- cyral 6y agoDatagrip is paid, but it’s an amazing editor and supports dark mode.
- theorangejuica 6y agoI use a mix of the below: - IntelliJ (similar notebook style setup as Datagrip for SQL queries) - Sequel Ace - a fork of Sequel Pro https://github.com/Sequel-Ace/Sequel-Ace https://github.com/Sequel-Ace/Sequel-Ace
- sandis 6y agoTablePlus - https://tableplus.com/ https://tableplus.com/
- llimos 6y agoFor Windows, HeidiSQL
- aembleton 6y agoDBeaver - https://dbeaver.io/ https://dbeaver.io/
- woofwoofwoof 6y agoHope HN will release it soon.
- getpolarized 6y agoAbout a year ago I was trying to figure out how important dark mode was for our app so I created a poll on Twitter and linked to it here on HN. https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/19/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-Default-With-95-Percent-Preferring-it-Over-Light-Mode.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/19/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-D... The idea being, if you were FORCED to pick one, would you rather have light or dark mode. 90% preferred dark mode with nearly 1000 votes. That blew me away honestly. Before that I thought that dark mode was a 'nice to have' but clearly I was wrong. The other issue isn't just dark mode but 'true black' mode for mobile devices and OLED. True black just looks better on mobile devices. Most dark mode skins can usually be converted to true black but you have to make sure the fonts don't become too strong.
- raunakdag 6y agoI mean, is HN really an unbiased sample source? Ask my mom or grandma if she prefers dark mode over light mode and she’ll say whatever she has right now on her phone.
- bigbubba 6y agoIs that because your grandmother doesn't understand the question/choice, or did she evaluate the two options and decide which she prefers? I think if I asked my grandmother a question like that she'd probably get concerned that I was about to change something she was already accustomed to, without necessarily understanding what change was being proposed, and would default to invoking the 'don't fix it if it ain't broke' principle. My mother on the other hand is younger and still has an adventurous willingness to try new things, and last I saw was using the dark mode in Windows 10.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoIt's not surprising that power users are more acquainted with the options available with a developed preference from trial and error. Polling someone who likes light themes because they know no better is an answer to a completely different question. Also, while trendy, "bias" isn't a word you should throw around unless you also have established the question being asked and what the bias is. Informed answers to the poll aren't biased, especially compared to someone who doesn't know what a dark mode is.
- zetabyte 6y agoI have mild afterimage illusion when viewing text or high contrast images. Interestingly, the symptom is worse when background is dark than the other way around. So dark mode themes are mostly no go for me mostly unless some transparency is enabled. Of course, I can not use this github dark mode sadly at this state.
- tgvaughan 6y agoWhenever I see something like this I always wonder how we came to allow website authors to dictate how their content is displayed on other people's computers. I know I can use greasemonkey or whatever to hack something together (or stick to lynx), but why don't websites generally just deliver text and leave the decision of how to render it up to me?
- fr2null 6y agoMultiple reasons: 1. Most people just want a website to work. (I know I do) 2. Because how are you gonna do support on a website when the website looks different for everyone involved? Are you only going to offer support for the basic text version? In that case, aren't you still kind off deciding how it looks, only now it looks ugly? 3. Branding. You want people to instantly recognize your product/brand. 4. To push features you want to be used, for better (handy new ones) or worse (advertising, generating bullshit metrics). Probably a lot more than, but these just popped in my mind.
- Seirdy 6y ago> Are you only going to offer support for the basic text version? In that case, aren't you still kind off deciding how it looks, only now it looks ugly? You can do both. Offer CSS, but keep the site usable without it. The same goes for every feature: JS, images (fallback to alt-text), etc. Non-HTML resources should usually be optional enhancements.
- gkoberger 6y agoThis is the weirdest take I've ever seen. You want to be writing the CSS (and JS?) for every site on the internet that you access?
- tgvaughan 6y agoBasically, yes. Not unique css mind you, but a single nicely readable (for me) set of styles for everything. This stoves a bunch of accessibility problems too. Why is this weird?
- javitury 6y agoIt's interesting to see how they did it and pros/cons of their approach. In general the page look like it's built server-side. Some parts use lit-html but they are just a few and I believe they are not using webcomponents or shadowRoot. Custom css properties are used to personalize colors, which would also work with shadowDom. background-color: var(--color-menu-bg-active); These custom properties are declared in light.scss and applied to the body, using the selector [data-color-mode="light"]. This method is fairly standard and widely used in modern websites. The only downside is that IE11 doesn't support custom properties and, in my expierience, there is no polyfill or postcss plugin that is 100% reliable.
- davidcsally 6y agoDoes GitHub support IE11? Would be interesting to see their browser demographics.
- rohanjon 6y agohttps://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/getting-started-with-github/supported-browsers https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/getti... No
- Sreyanth 6y agoIf only they can read my dotfiles and create the theme just for me! ;)
- gavinray 6y agoGithub and Hackernews are two of the only light-themed websites I've left that way. I got too used to them, and have tried putting dark themes on them but it just looks "wrong" now. Humans are weird.
- tclancy 6y agoThen there's a pair of us — don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.
- jassany 6y agoMake that a trio.
- groundCode 6y agoHow dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog...
- sitzkrieg 6y agoi use light theme on everything. its easier on the eyes
- stronglikedan 6y agoIf you use the computer in a well lit area, then yes. Dark themes work well for dim lighting. That said, IME a light theme in a well lit area is much easier on the eyes, especially over the course of a work day.
- checkyoursudo 6y agoI've read that, while the science/usability research is largely non-committal about which is better, it seems that black on white or similar makes your pupils dilate much less and therefore is easier for working for longer periods (less eyestrain). Though, as you say, I think you also really do need a well lit area to take advantage; super bright in a dark room isn't very good.
- pppschmitt 6y agoIs it just me or does the activity feed still use a white background (and therefore almost unreadable) on Firefox?
- paulie_a 6y agoI wish they would undo the new ui entirely
- ramenmeal 6y agoCompletely irrelevant and more of an "off my chest". I got lasik earlier this year from one of the most accomplished surgeons using the latest lasers. Anyway, I have a bit of "haloing" which is more apparent on black screens w/ white text, so now I barely use dark mode. I guess you never know the side affects you'll get with elective stuff.
- edmundo 6y agoI had LASIK done 2 months ago or so, and I was seeing the same halo effect at first, but it got better eventually and now I'm back using dark mode.
- st1x7 6y agoGood dark themes are generally softer than this. This is way too dark. Also, the identicons (default avatars) look out of place in dark mode.
- jitbit 6y agoAgreed. Dark modes should never ever have black (ish) background. PS. I've been using this one for years and it looks much "softer" on the eyes: https://poychang.github.io/github-dark-theme/ https://poychang.github.io/github-dark-theme/ Hope it's still work in progress
- jug 6y agoFor some reason Microsoft keeps doing dark themes like this. Same in Windows 10. Pitch black against text. Do they even let designers do this job or is it just devs checking in code? A designer should know about these things by heart.
- npunt 6y agoYeah I truly don't understand who (if anyone) is leading design at Microsoft. There's so many good examples of how to do things right in UI these days and they somehow keep making the wrong choices. Other examples include their insistence on pixel-thin icons which are barely legible when reduced [1], flat buttons that are just colored boxes devoid of even basic button affordances, hard edges everywhere, and nearly 100% saturated colors that are an assault on the eyes. They've never been very good at UI, but where they are these days is just bad. Their new Fluent design language [2] on mobile looks like an improvement from Metro, they're actually seeing what others are doing and copying it decently enough, but its not really out there much in their products. [1] example here https://medium.com/microsoft-design/evolving-the-microsoft-fluent-design-system-9b37fb890c82 https://medium.com/microsoft-design/evolving-the-microsoft-f... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/ https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/
- jitbit 6y agoWell, actually, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (surprisingly) both have very nice dark themes. And they're both Microsoft products. PS. In fact, it's more likely it was the Github's old design team, not MS.
- hpfr 6y agoIt appears the default is light mode, rather than system preference. For those of us who use websites logged out most of the time, this is a bit annoying. Hopefully the default is changed to system preference in future.
- jarpineh 6y agoYes, this is very unfortunate decision. Same that Stackoverflow chose to do. I am liable to call this dark pattern... There’s no technical reason for this that I can think of. Guess our usage data locked in is that much more profitable.
- dmitshur 6y agoMaybe it's because the dark mode is new and in beta, waiting for more user feedback before they feel comfortable making it default in more situations.
- jarpineh 6y agoIf that were the case there could be an option to set this on browser basis, using the usual cookies and local storage. Dark mode is not (just) a theme. It's about accessibility. Its benefits vary by time of day and screen in use. Also, I don't want to use Github when authorized to do things on company repos when browsing something completely unrelated in my own time and own devices. Thus this option is not available to me without creating a dummy account. I also have to change this manually whenever environment changes. With the accompanying blinding flash of light on unfortunate late night sessions. I'll admit there might be other considerations than funnelling users to registering and using their accounts. It's just not a good user experience and misunderstanding of the target audience.
- enriquto 6y agoWhy do sites need to "release" dark mode? Everybody can change their user css easily, and put whatever text/background colors they want. The problem is that the css of most sites is an humongous monstrosity and does not cope well with a couple of simple changes (which was precisely the purpose behind the design of CSS!)
- Sodman 6y agoWhy do sites need to "release" front-ends? Everybody can write javascript clients to send GETs and POSTs to any company's back-end server! Making it a single button that enables a different theme that a professional designer somewhere has signed off on is a much better user experience for almost everybody when compared to the "write your own CSS" option. Even if you automate it with a browser extension, you're still giving that extension read+write access to the site, hopefully it's trustworthy!
- jackson1442 6y agoI love using dark themes, however all of the ones I found online have their own deficits and broke whenever GitHub pushed an update. I have no interest in designing my own as I have a terrible eye for design and am equally terrible at visualizing changes, making the process take forever. If I can click a button and make dark theme work, that's fantastic.
- npteljes 6y agoThey can score good points with people who like it, for one.
- Razengan 6y agoNow if only HackerNews would relent in its zealous vendetta against eyes. It's appalling how such major apps and websites literally took YEARS to implement Dark Mode after OSes added support for it, while plenty of minor devs had their shit ready to ship during the betas of iOS and macOS. If their elite teams can't manage something as simple as an additional color theme, what confidence do they hope to inspire in their product? (then again most popular apps are actually crappy in other areas too; WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat etc.)
- onceonce 6y agohttps://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65 https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65
- lukaszkups 6y agoWhoa, this is really dark - even waay too dark for my taste.
- oltdaniel 6y agoFinally. Really happy with it, except that the explorer/trending and trending page hasn't been updated yet. I hope that will follow to protect my eyes from that brightness contrast at night and in the morning.
- Raed667 6y agoCould it be that you're using Refined Github? Try disabling it.
- Seirdy 6y agoA quick 'n dirty userstyle for Refined GH users: @-moz-document domain("github.com") { .dashboard .js-all-activity-header + div { background-color: inherit !important; border: 1px solid var(--color-border-secondary) !important; } .dashboard-rollup-items .body { border-top: 1px solid var(--color-border-secondary) !important; } } Edit: issue for Refined GH: https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/3798 https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/3798
- Seirdy 6y agoRefined GitHub was just updated to support it a few mins ago. A couple rough edges but it works now.
- zteppenwolf 6y agoOmg it was about time!
- radicalriddler 6y agoDoesn't seem to work on the /trending page :(
- monkin 6y agoNow I’m waiting for tomorrow’s news “Hacker News Releases Dark Mode”! :)
- fritex 6y agoFinally!
- rafaelturk 6y agoI like the idea, but super high contrast and dark for me, used for a few hours and reverted it to the old model.
- thrower123 6y agoIt's a large failure that individual websites and applications have to even bother creating "dark mode" skins, rather than using the user's system color scheme.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 6y agoNext they should release "HTML mode", where the site is just HTML for people who get headaches trying to use sites that think they're applications instead of documents.
- sweetrobot 6y agoGarlic releases black garlic
- twhb 6y agoRelated question: why do most websites give you a light/dark/system toggle instead of always going with system? I’m having trouble thinking of any time I’d want the system dark but GitHub light, or vice versa. Is it just for systems lacking support?
- haswell 6y agoI'm not sure if they is why, but even though I use dark mode at the system level, I've found that not every site has a good implementation of dark mode, and for that reason I appreciate the option to revert to light mode.
- sam0x17 6y agoFor once I have to actually say this looks better than the auto-generated theme from Dark Reader. That is rare. Good job!!
- whatl3y 6y agoI've used the Night Eye Chrome extension for a white and it does a great job of converting any website/web app to dark mode.
- haolez 6y agoThe UI looks faster as well. I'm testing on a slow Chromebook, so it's really noticeable. Well done, GitHub team!
- wiradikusuma 6y agoAnyone know a "Material design spec" for dark mode? I mean I'm no designer and I just want to copy paste some hex codes to make the apps I built support dark mode. Dark mode sounds easy (just make the background black!), but I'm pretty sure there are more science to that, because many dark mode apps I've tried make me uncomfortable and I reverted to normal mode because it's _easier_ for my eyes.
- nxc18 6y agoNot material, but Apple has good coverage. I imagine you could copy their hex values, or come up with a very similar scheme. The pattern you’ll see is that accent colors tend to need to be brighter on black backgrounds. If you’re targeting iOS and your design team doesn’t exist or hasn’t specified a theme, consider using the built-in adaptive colors basically everywhere. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/visual-design/color/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Material guidelines also cover dark mode, but it seems the hex codes are harder to copy/paste as they seem to all be embedded in images: https://www.material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html https://www.material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html
- HJain13 6y agohttps://material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html#properties https://material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html#properties
- wruza 6y agoNot to disregard dark theme users, but dark sites always look the same to me. Light color schemes still feel distinct in subtleties like fonts, border colors and other things that scream “you’re looking at github” or “you’re looking at msdn” or “it’s your iphone”. It doesn’t happen with dark mode, it’s just all the same dark bg with some text. Idk what can be done to fix it.
- lukeramsden 6y ago> Idk what can be done to fix it. Nothing please, that's exactly how I want my sites to look.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI dunno, there's plenty of variation if you look at e.g. https://vscodethemes.com/ https://vscodethemes.com/. That said, on an operating system level (both mobile and desktop) you will have apps that use the same color schemes because they're dictated by the OS, e.g. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/images/DarkMode_FullScreen_dark.png https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
- globular-toast 6y agoNice! Looks like an improvement over what Dark Reader gave me. It's odd that they have a skin colour settings for cartoon hands. Why not just stick to yellow and keep race out of it? Having that settings is essentially saying that race matters which I find offensive. I don't care what colour your skin is.
- z3t4 6y agoThe default Github repo view looks amazingly good. It has changed some during the years but the base design is still there. I think many people choose Github over other web based repo views just because of the design. I don't think the dark mode can live up to it though, it still looks good, but not amazing.
- 1_player 6y agoI did, moved all company repos from Gitlab. Also the fact that I found Gitlab extremely buggy, but the design was definitely a factor.
- andreag11 6y agofor feedback: https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65 https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65
- andreag11 6y agoFeedback welcome: https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65 https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65