4 ms·

Windows 10 dark mode is unusable. I don't understand how anyone can read white on black without their eyes hurting. When I first tried it out I was instantly

Windows 10 dark mode is unusable. I don't understand how anyone can read white on black without their eyes hurting. When I first tried it out I was instantly taken aback at how MS had used full black for their darkmode. Not suprising, considering their inability to implement reasonable design, but ridiculous nonetheless. I can't fathom how no one on their design team stepped back and thought 'maybe there's a reason dark mode is usually a dark grey instead of black'.

tentacleuno 5y ago
> When I first tried it out I was instantly taken aback at how MS had used full black for their darkmode. Not suprising, considering their inability to implement reasonable design, but ridiculous nonetheless. I can't fathom how no one on their design team stepped back and thought 'maybe there's a reason dark mode is usually a dark grey instead of black'. It is most likely due to AMOLED and their big investment in mobile technology (Surface, etc.) I imagine a lot of them have AMOLED screens, so a pure-black dark mode pays off here. Nevertheless, I can't imagine it would be hard to just let people choose the colour of the dark variant, like GTK / Qt theming systems do on Linux.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  If anything AMOLED would make it even worse in terms of readability.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    The win is it saves on battery life.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  > I imagine a lot of them have AMOLED screens Not designing for a variety of displays and viewing conditions is frowned upon in general, but should be inconceivable for a company the size of any MS org. On that note, this is one of the reasons I still use a 1x display as my main. Currently it’s a comically large 43” 4k@1x, so it’s only representative of “normal” usage when I remember to shrink windows, but still.
betwixthewires 5y ago
White text on black is terrible with LCDs, but with OLED it is wonderful. Imagine dimming your screen just right, the only thing you can see is the text you want to read. It is much more easy on the eyes than even paper or e ink devices IMO, as long as the display isn't turned up too bright.

tentacleuno 5y ago

> When I first tried it out I was instantly taken aback at how MS had used full black for their darkmode. Not suprising, considering their inability to implement reasonable design, but ridiculous nonetheless. I can't fathom how no one on their design team stepped back and thought 'maybe there's a reason dark mode is usually a dark grey instead of black'. It is most likely due to AMOLED and their big investment in mobile technology (Surface, etc.) I imagine a lot of them have AMOLED screens, so a pure-black dark mode pays off here. Nevertheless, I can't imagine it would be hard to just let people choose the colour of the dark variant, like GTK / Qt theming systems do on Linux.

breakfastduck 5y ago
If anything AMOLED would make it even worse in terms of readability.
- monocasa 5y ago
  The win is it saves on battery life.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
> I imagine a lot of them have AMOLED screens Not designing for a variety of displays and viewing conditions is frowned upon in general, but should be inconceivable for a company the size of any MS org. On that note, this is one of the reasons I still use a 1x display as my main. Currently it’s a comically large 43” 4k@1x, so it’s only representative of “normal” usage when I remember to shrink windows, but still.

betwixthewires 5y ago

White text on black is terrible with LCDs, but with OLED it is wonderful. Imagine dimming your screen just right, the only thing you can see is the text you want to read. It is much more easy on the eyes than even paper or e ink devices IMO, as long as the display isn't turned up too bright.