4 ms·
Why would you read your books in white on black?
by mkesper 3y ago
Why would you read your books in white on black?
- gnicholas 3y agoI read lots of stuff this way, and surely am not the only one. I think Ars has a night mode toggle on their website, in fact.
- asicsp 3y agoOne of the screenshot shows settings for text and background color.
- animuchan 3y agoI used to dislike white-on-black too, but it eventually grew on me. Not least because the floaters are getting more distracting with age it seems, and black screen makes them disappear.
- anotheryou 3y agoI prefer that sometimes. Especially on mobile.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Qwertious 3y agoBecause LCD screens have a minimum brightness, and white-on-black lets you slightly lower that threshold if you're e.g. reading in bed on your phone at night with the lights off, and want to take the brightness as low as possible.
- boredhedgehog 3y agoIs this where we sneer at people who use sans-serif fonts and left-aligned text? Some people just have no taste! :-)
- dspillett 3y agoMany OLED screens consume less power when displaying mostly black, so it is not uncommon for phones to be used that way. If you are used to dark mode from other uses¹ you might prefer it for everything else on *LED screens too even though it would likely feel unnatural for “real” reading on paper³. -- [1] not caught the bug myself yet, but most of the devs around me use it for coding, I've used it for terminal work for as long as I can remember, and have my phone in dark mode² so apps & web stuff that respect that are light-on-dark [2] apparently this saves battery life on OLED screens, though not as much as some saying that seem to think, and it is also nicer for low-light situations like when I'm shutting down in the evening (but have messages to respond to before I do). [3] or on an e-ink device
- walteweiss 3y agoI read that way since circa ’00s and with oled screens it’s so great! I just don’t understand how anyone else reads differently.
- maskros 3y agoBecause astigmatism or other refractive vision errors. Think about how astigmatism affects vision, then take into account the effect on pupil size based on incoming brightness, and how this affects the depth of field, and you may understand why.
- walteweiss 3y agoSorry, still don’t understand. Would appreciate ELI5 or other kind of explanation.
- arcanemachiner 3y agoSome people have conditions that make dark mode text harder to read, not easier. Astigmatism is one of them. Also, myopia. It can cause "halation" which is like a foggy glow around objects which are brighter than their relative surroundings. Like a streetlight at night, or white text on a black background. I have this to some degree but I still prefer dark mode most of the time.
- walteweiss 3y agoThank you for the explanation. I thought it’s the other way: the dark mode somehow provokes your eyesight to become worse. For me, I used white-on-black since the dawn of time (with CTR displays) and even then it was much easier on my eyes. Right now, I have an iPhone’s frontal sensors dirty (have a broken screen) and it manages auto-brightness wrongly to some degree. I have a dark theme all the time, and I tried to make it automatic (light during the daytime and dark during the nighttime, obviously). So so so horrible to me! Switched it back almost immediately.
- pmontra 3y agoI read red on black at night, with lights off. White is too much bright. I think astronomers would agree with me.