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I agree with this. Default, unconfigurable light mode has been around for a while, and infrastructure like the Dark Reader plugin is around to address this. The

I agree with this. Default, unconfigurable light mode has been around for a while, and infrastructure like the Dark Reader plugin is around to address this. There is no such thing for light mode, though. In my opinion, light mode is better than dark mode in most situations. The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source, and most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a light or go to sleep. Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer's day? Can't read a thing, even with brightness cranked all the way up.

cwbriscoe 2y ago
I never knew about the Dark Reader plugin. I just installed it and it makes HN, Slashdot and other sites much more readable for me. Thanks!
walthamstow 2y ago
I agree broadly but in London it starts to get dark about 3pm at the moment. In the winter, dark mode is a lifesaver.
BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
> The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source, and most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a light or go to sleep. It's always been strange to me how many people without a medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like cave trolls, but there we are. At least now operating systems all have switchable modes that get reported to the browser. The browser can/should adapt to whatever setting the OS reports. But UI design is, with a few islands of rationality in history from people like Paul Fitts, mostly a cascade of poorly applied vibes and fads. First people say that contrast is bad, so then people don't use enough contrast. Then people say that brightness is bad, so people don't use enough brightness. Then people realize why contrast and brightness were important all along and the circle of life continues.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  > It's always been strange to me how many people without a medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like cave trolls, but there we are. As a millennial, I grew up with rooms being lit by 1-3 relatively dim lampshaded 40-60w incandescent bulbs at night. As a result that’s what feels comfortable and relaxing to me as an adult. Rooms at home being brightly lit at night feels grating and reminiscent of a grocery store or hospital or something.
  - Doxin 2y ago
    > Rooms at home being brightly lit at night feels grating and reminiscent of a grocery store or hospital or something. Look into getting warm white lights. For some reason cool white lights are super common while I do think most people at home would actually prefer warm white. Things can be bright and cozy.
    - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      Oh yeah, I’m a big fan of warm lights and have been using them for a while. Still don’t like them bright at night. Lights that are indirect (e.g. under counter) I can deal with being considerably brighter but for your typical table/floor lamp, 60W incandescent equivalent is the upper limit. I don’t like ceiling pot lights at all unless the bulb can be dimmed.
      - Doxin 2y ago
        Glare from lights is the worst. I really loathe the recent trend of bare bulbs and lampshades that don't shade.
      - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
        > I don’t like ceiling pot lights at all Why not? Is it not better for lights to be overhead and not directly in your field of view?
        2y ago
tbrownaw 2y ago
> * only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source,* Also maybe if you set your screen brightness inappropriately high.
- lukan 2y ago
  Or if you are sensitive to light. I feel kind of traumatized for years of forced light mode everywhere. It hurts my eyes. In bright sun when outside, I use light mode. Allmost everywhere else, I won't. So please @everyone thinking like this, don't assume, what is best for me, because your taste is different.
- jezek2 2y ago
  Yeah, most people use their screens with brightness cranked up and then wonder why they have all sort of problems. The trick is to set a low brightness, in my case it's a little below what you would call comfortable, but that's because you adapt to it in a sec and will be perceived as good. If you can't set it too low on the monitor, set brightness to 0 and lower the contrast. If it's still too bright use also brightness/contrast controls in your GPU settings. It is also needed to adjust the settings during the day. But having a more controlled light in your room is a better option. Once you start getting comments from others that they can't see shit on your screen then you've set the correct level :) Another very often forgotten thing is to set up correct gamma correction! Yes that thing from CRTs is often needed on LCDs too! LCDs can produce quite big contrast which is unpleasant, for example I set mine to 1.3, fixed it nicely for me. One approach to find a good value is to have antialiased text both in white-on-black and black-on-white and switching between these. Once the apparent thickness is the same then you've got the right value. Beware of ClearType settings though, you may need to do the test with a classic antialiasing instead. The result is that you can comfortably use light mode in total dark room without any issues.
  - LtWorf 2y ago
    I don't really want to spend 5 minutes every time to open the 25 menus my screen uses to change the brightness.
whalesalad 2y ago
Nah some of us need dark mode 24x7 and actually benefit from it even in broad daylight. Not fair to make this assertion and assume everyone is like you.
- nunez 2y ago
  But thats what browser extensions and high contrast mode are for
bee_rider 2y ago
On my system, the dark reader plugin also has an option to force a light theme. Actually, the browser has the ability to set a default background and foreground anyway, so this extension would be unnecessary if websites would behave properly and respect these defaults unless they really need to. We live in an unfortunate world where a “actually respect my preferences” extension is necessary, but since it is necessary, it should be noted that it covers both options. Overall the situation is pretty stupid but hey at least we’ve got workarounds, right?
- aniviacat 2y ago
  Browsers shouldn't set a preferred colour scheme by default. I think the prefers-color-scheme media query would be respected on more sites if by default it had the value "unset" or something, instead of defaulting to "light" or "dark". I personally don't respect it on my sites for this reason. 99% of people visiting my sites won't actually have set this value themselves.
  - Kamq 2y ago
    > Browsers shouldn't set a preferred colour scheme by default. I mean, they really don't (the defaults are exactly what they have been since Mosaic left the scene). Unless the user tells them to do something else. And at that point, it's my computer, and I told it to do something, why shouldn't it do that?
  - steve_taylor 2y ago
    > 99% of people visiting my sites won't actually have set this value themselves. It's inherited from their operating system settings. Dark theme is typically opt-in.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    Actually, websites shouldn’t set a preferred color scheme by default.
accelbred 2y ago
All the dark mode extensions I've used also would work for making pages light mode. For me, I have trouble focusing when reading light mode content, but dark mode is perfectly fine (light backgrounds seem not still, as if there is movement, and this effect lessens the darker the background is.
bhauer 2y ago
> Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Backlit screens are difficult to read in high-light environments regardless of whether you're reading black text on white or white text on black. I use white-on-black ("dark mode") on my e-ink Kindle to read outside all the time. And the same is true on our Daylight computer. White-on-black remains my preference in high-light environments.
leptons 2y ago
Are you confusing the brightness setting on the display with "dark" and "light" mode? Because I always have the brightness on my monitors at max when the lights are on. I practically never change it. As a software developer, who codes about 15 hours a day (day job and personal projects), I ditched "light mode" many years ago as it's too harsh on my eyes to be staring at a bright white screen that many hours a day. Dark mode is far easier to look at for long periods of time. I have no trouble reading code in dark mode in a well lit room. If it were difficult to read, it wouldn't last 15 minutes for my needs. I don't code in "D4rK M0D3" in the dark, I'm not a l337 H4CK3r. >Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer's day? Phone in direct sunlight is one thing. That isn't the way most people use devices, that's a more rare use case than sitting at a desk 8 hours a day staring at a bright screen. There are also high-contrast modes for eyesight challenged people, which can be used effectively in bright sunlight too, but I'm not going to code that way for hours a day if I don't really need to. Phones and other devices also have adaptive brightness, so if you are in a dark room the phone's display brightness is going to be dimmer automatically, and I'm not really sure you know the difference between "dark mode" and "brightness turned down". So using a phone screen and high contrast required for using screens in direct bright sunlight is a poor example to support your argument. Maybe you also need to qualify all of your arguments with "on a mobile device in bright sunlight", because that isn't the main use case for "dark mode".
- lxgr 2y ago
  > I ditched "light mode" many years ago as it's too harsh on my eyes to be staring at a bright white screen that many hours a day. [...] I always have the brightness on my monitors at max when the lights are on. If your screen at the brightest setting hurts your eyes, why would you use it like that?
  - leptons 2y ago
    I enjoy the full brightness of the display when it calls for it, when watching videos or video games, when the screen isn't 99% full-on white pixels. I also enjoy the crispness and contrast of white text on a dark background when the display brightness is at maximum. No, I do not enjoy using a display at low brightness, and I really don't like being blasted by full-on white background with dark text on it all day every day.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
I like Pure Black mode because the black pixels actually turn off on my screens, making it much more pleasant to look at. Even in broad daylight! I wish Pure Black mode was an option separate from Dark and Light mode, like it is on some Android apps. For now I get by by minimizing brightness in Dark Reader, but it is a bit clunky.
bobmcnamara 2y ago
Default, unconfigurable dark mode has been around much longer.
CrimsonRain 2y ago
> most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be in Please explain.
- smlavine 2y ago
  Sleep hygiene. I'm in college and I know too many people that waste away online until 3am and are always tired and then down coffee after coffee during the day.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Other than that, > sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source is also really not great for your eyes, in the same way that having a bright light source in your field of vision (e.g. a window without blackout shades directly behind your monitor) isn't either.
    - CrimsonRain 2y ago
      I call bullshit. I'm using computers/TV/Phones in dark room, on an average 12h+ a day, for ~20 years. My eyes are just fine. Last time (and only time) I went to an eye doctor two years ago because people like you keep saying my eyes are damaged, the doctor asked me why am I wasting my money going to eye doctor.
  - CrimsonRain 2y ago
    Just because someone stays up till 3AM (which I have done for years), doesn't mean they need to sleep less or feel always tired. This has nothing to do with using computer in dark room which is possible even at 3PM. Also, I don't drink coffee (less than 5 times a year). There are plenty of people who sleep at proper time and still drink a lot of coffee all day.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I use dark mode during the day in rooms with lots of natural light spilling in because that’s what’s felt better to me ever since we collectively decided that light themes need to use stark white and very light grays instead of the mid-grays dappled with mid-colors that used to be popular. Dark mode is a bandaid for the needlessly bright themes that became the norm with the advent of flat design.
tunared 2y ago
As someone that had cataracts, light mode was very hard to read. It was like looking directly into high beams. I used a dark reader plugins that was alright, but was not the same as a site designed to support dark mode.
- kps 2y ago
  Yes, and for someone with astigmatic halation, dark mode is very hard to read. Web sites should support both, and respect `:prefers-color-scheme`.
jltsiren 2y ago
In my experience, high contrast dark mode is readable in high-light environments, but it causes the issue the images in the article show. Beyond that, I have no preferences between light and dark modes on laptop screens and smaller. But I prefer having at least some dark elements visible on large screens, because floaters can be distracting against large bright surfaces. Usually it's a terminal window with the traditional light gray on black color scheme, but I tend to use dark mode in IDEs and other full-screen apps.
wruza 2y ago
I use dark mode in a (moderately) lit room, because it makes me focus better. Even colorschemes can affect my state of mind and make it work differently. I’m not even talking about effectiveness here, just comfort, although they correlate. I can’t just choose light mode. When screen is too dark (sunlight, etc), I make it brighter. Requires >=400 nit or whatever that unit is for an average day.
jorams 2y ago
> The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source It's really not that extreme. Dark mode is more comfortable as soon as it's dark outside (this time of year that starts between 3 and 4 pm) unless I'm flooding my entire room with enough light to replace the sunlight. I still have the lights on, but none of that light is as bright/white as an average white webpage. Even with screen brightness turned down and a blue light filter, an all-white webpage is usually just too much white. > Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. This is just completely opposite for me. Reading in dark mode is only uncomfortable if there's sunlight basically directly behind the screen, while light mode is only really comfortable in high-light environments.
eikenberry 2y ago
Light/Dark modes at their extremes are both annoying. White on black or black on white are both to extreme. The best solution IMO are mid-level colors. I personally prefer the schemes with darker grey backgrounds and lighter grey (or other lighter color) foreground, but the opposite isn't bad either. What are bad is that the default light modes are generally much to light. A random site I have open right now has a background color of #f2f2f2 w/ text color of #151515, it is only tolerable to read if I have my monitor red-shifted to around 4200 degrees (in a well lit room w/ lots of natural light).
rerdavies 2y ago
On my phone I go to dark mode when I'm reading ebooks in bright sunlight. Not sure this a universal experience.
rldjbpin 2y ago
> Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer's day? Can't read a thing, even with brightness cranked all the way up. This. once stuck outside with limited battery and tried switching to light mode. could instantly reduce brightness and still see everything. the nature of lcd display makes it hard to display contrast without backlighting. but the early ones could be effective by showing dark details on a blank slate. this situation brought back my appreciation for having this mode.

cwbriscoe 2y ago

I never knew about the Dark Reader plugin. I just installed it and it makes HN, Slashdot and other sites much more readable for me. Thanks!

walthamstow 2y ago

I agree broadly but in London it starts to get dark about 3pm at the moment. In the winter, dark mode is a lifesaver.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago

> The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source, and most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a light or go to sleep. It's always been strange to me how many people without a medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like cave trolls, but there we are. At least now operating systems all have switchable modes that get reported to the browser. The browser can/should adapt to whatever setting the OS reports. But UI design is, with a few islands of rationality in history from people like Paul Fitts, mostly a cascade of poorly applied vibes and fads. First people say that contrast is bad, so then people don't use enough contrast. Then people say that brightness is bad, so people don't use enough brightness. Then people realize why contrast and brightness were important all along and the circle of life continues.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago
> It's always been strange to me how many people without a medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like cave trolls, but there we are. As a millennial, I grew up with rooms being lit by 1-3 relatively dim lampshaded 40-60w incandescent bulbs at night. As a result that’s what feels comfortable and relaxing to me as an adult. Rooms at home being brightly lit at night feels grating and reminiscent of a grocery store or hospital or something.
- Doxin 2y ago
  > Rooms at home being brightly lit at night feels grating and reminiscent of a grocery store or hospital or something. Look into getting warm white lights. For some reason cool white lights are super common while I do think most people at home would actually prefer warm white. Things can be bright and cozy.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    Oh yeah, I’m a big fan of warm lights and have been using them for a while. Still don’t like them bright at night. Lights that are indirect (e.g. under counter) I can deal with being considerably brighter but for your typical table/floor lamp, 60W incandescent equivalent is the upper limit. I don’t like ceiling pot lights at all unless the bulb can be dimmed.
    - Doxin 2y ago
      Glare from lights is the worst. I really loathe the recent trend of bare bulbs and lampshades that don't shade.
    - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
      > I don’t like ceiling pot lights at all Why not? Is it not better for lights to be overhead and not directly in your field of view?
      - 2y ago

tbrownaw 2y ago

> * only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source,* Also maybe if you set your screen brightness inappropriately high.

lukan 2y ago
Or if you are sensitive to light. I feel kind of traumatized for years of forced light mode everywhere. It hurts my eyes. In bright sun when outside, I use light mode. Allmost everywhere else, I won't. So please @everyone thinking like this, don't assume, what is best for me, because your taste is different.
jezek2 2y ago
Yeah, most people use their screens with brightness cranked up and then wonder why they have all sort of problems. The trick is to set a low brightness, in my case it's a little below what you would call comfortable, but that's because you adapt to it in a sec and will be perceived as good. If you can't set it too low on the monitor, set brightness to 0 and lower the contrast. If it's still too bright use also brightness/contrast controls in your GPU settings. It is also needed to adjust the settings during the day. But having a more controlled light in your room is a better option. Once you start getting comments from others that they can't see shit on your screen then you've set the correct level :) Another very often forgotten thing is to set up correct gamma correction! Yes that thing from CRTs is often needed on LCDs too! LCDs can produce quite big contrast which is unpleasant, for example I set mine to 1.3, fixed it nicely for me. One approach to find a good value is to have antialiased text both in white-on-black and black-on-white and switching between these. Once the apparent thickness is the same then you've got the right value. Beware of ClearType settings though, you may need to do the test with a classic antialiasing instead. The result is that you can comfortably use light mode in total dark room without any issues.
- LtWorf 2y ago
  I don't really want to spend 5 minutes every time to open the 25 menus my screen uses to change the brightness.

whalesalad 2y ago

Nah some of us need dark mode 24x7 and actually benefit from it even in broad daylight. Not fair to make this assertion and assume everyone is like you.

nunez 2y ago
But thats what browser extensions and high contrast mode are for

bee_rider 2y ago

On my system, the dark reader plugin also has an option to force a light theme. Actually, the browser has the ability to set a default background and foreground anyway, so this extension would be unnecessary if websites would behave properly and respect these defaults unless they really need to. We live in an unfortunate world where a “actually respect my preferences” extension is necessary, but since it is necessary, it should be noted that it covers both options. Overall the situation is pretty stupid but hey at least we’ve got workarounds, right?

aniviacat 2y ago
Browsers shouldn't set a preferred colour scheme by default. I think the prefers-color-scheme media query would be respected on more sites if by default it had the value "unset" or something, instead of defaulting to "light" or "dark". I personally don't respect it on my sites for this reason. 99% of people visiting my sites won't actually have set this value themselves.
- Kamq 2y ago
  > Browsers shouldn't set a preferred colour scheme by default. I mean, they really don't (the defaults are exactly what they have been since Mosaic left the scene). Unless the user tells them to do something else. And at that point, it's my computer, and I told it to do something, why shouldn't it do that?
- steve_taylor 2y ago
  > 99% of people visiting my sites won't actually have set this value themselves. It's inherited from their operating system settings. Dark theme is typically opt-in.
- philwelch 2y ago
  Actually, websites shouldn’t set a preferred color scheme by default.

accelbred 2y ago

All the dark mode extensions I've used also would work for making pages light mode. For me, I have trouble focusing when reading light mode content, but dark mode is perfectly fine (light backgrounds seem not still, as if there is movement, and this effect lessens the darker the background is.

bhauer 2y ago

> Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Backlit screens are difficult to read in high-light environments regardless of whether you're reading black text on white or white text on black. I use white-on-black ("dark mode") on my e-ink Kindle to read outside all the time. And the same is true on our Daylight computer. White-on-black remains my preference in high-light environments.

leptons 2y ago

Are you confusing the brightness setting on the display with "dark" and "light" mode? Because I always have the brightness on my monitors at max when the lights are on. I practically never change it. As a software developer, who codes about 15 hours a day (day job and personal projects), I ditched "light mode" many years ago as it's too harsh on my eyes to be staring at a bright white screen that many hours a day. Dark mode is far easier to look at for long periods of time. I have no trouble reading code in dark mode in a well lit room. If it were difficult to read, it wouldn't last 15 minutes for my needs. I don't code in "D4rK M0D3" in the dark, I'm not a l337 H4CK3r. >Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer's day? Phone in direct sunlight is one thing. That isn't the way most people use devices, that's a more rare use case than sitting at a desk 8 hours a day staring at a bright screen. There are also high-contrast modes for eyesight challenged people, which can be used effectively in bright sunlight too, but I'm not going to code that way for hours a day if I don't really need to. Phones and other devices also have adaptive brightness, so if you are in a dark room the phone's display brightness is going to be dimmer automatically, and I'm not really sure you know the difference between "dark mode" and "brightness turned down". So using a phone screen and high contrast required for using screens in direct bright sunlight is a poor example to support your argument. Maybe you also need to qualify all of your arguments with "on a mobile device in bright sunlight", because that isn't the main use case for "dark mode".

lxgr 2y ago
> I ditched "light mode" many years ago as it's too harsh on my eyes to be staring at a bright white screen that many hours a day. [...] I always have the brightness on my monitors at max when the lights are on. If your screen at the brightest setting hurts your eyes, why would you use it like that?
- leptons 2y ago
  I enjoy the full brightness of the display when it calls for it, when watching videos or video games, when the screen isn't 99% full-on white pixels. I also enjoy the crispness and contrast of white text on a dark background when the display brightness is at maximum. No, I do not enjoy using a display at low brightness, and I really don't like being blasted by full-on white background with dark text on it all day every day.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

I like Pure Black mode because the black pixels actually turn off on my screens, making it much more pleasant to look at. Even in broad daylight! I wish Pure Black mode was an option separate from Dark and Light mode, like it is on some Android apps. For now I get by by minimizing brightness in Dark Reader, but it is a bit clunky.

bobmcnamara 2y ago

Default, unconfigurable dark mode has been around much longer.

CrimsonRain 2y ago

> most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be in Please explain.

smlavine 2y ago
Sleep hygiene. I'm in college and I know too many people that waste away online until 3am and are always tired and then down coffee after coffee during the day.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Other than that, > sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source is also really not great for your eyes, in the same way that having a bright light source in your field of vision (e.g. a window without blackout shades directly behind your monitor) isn't either.
  - CrimsonRain 2y ago
    I call bullshit. I'm using computers/TV/Phones in dark room, on an average 12h+ a day, for ~20 years. My eyes are just fine. Last time (and only time) I went to an eye doctor two years ago because people like you keep saying my eyes are damaged, the doctor asked me why am I wasting my money going to eye doctor.
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  Just because someone stays up till 3AM (which I have done for years), doesn't mean they need to sleep less or feel always tired. This has nothing to do with using computer in dark room which is possible even at 3PM. Also, I don't drink coffee (less than 5 times a year). There are plenty of people who sleep at proper time and still drink a lot of coffee all day.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago

I use dark mode during the day in rooms with lots of natural light spilling in because that’s what’s felt better to me ever since we collectively decided that light themes need to use stark white and very light grays instead of the mid-grays dappled with mid-colors that used to be popular. Dark mode is a bandaid for the needlessly bright themes that became the norm with the advent of flat design.

tunared 2y ago

As someone that had cataracts, light mode was very hard to read. It was like looking directly into high beams. I used a dark reader plugins that was alright, but was not the same as a site designed to support dark mode.

kps 2y ago
Yes, and for someone with astigmatic halation, dark mode is very hard to read. Web sites should support both, and respect `:prefers-color-scheme`.

jltsiren 2y ago

In my experience, high contrast dark mode is readable in high-light environments, but it causes the issue the images in the article show. Beyond that, I have no preferences between light and dark modes on laptop screens and smaller. But I prefer having at least some dark elements visible on large screens, because floaters can be distracting against large bright surfaces. Usually it's a terminal window with the traditional light gray on black color scheme, but I tend to use dark mode in IDEs and other full-screen apps.

wruza 2y ago

I use dark mode in a (moderately) lit room, because it makes me focus better. Even colorschemes can affect my state of mind and make it work differently. I’m not even talking about effectiveness here, just comfort, although they correlate. I can’t just choose light mode. When screen is too dark (sunlight, etc), I make it brighter. Requires >=400 nit or whatever that unit is for an average day.

jorams 2y ago

> The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source It's really not that extreme. Dark mode is more comfortable as soon as it's dark outside (this time of year that starts between 3 and 4 pm) unless I'm flooding my entire room with enough light to replace the sunlight. I still have the lights on, but none of that light is as bright/white as an average white webpage. Even with screen brightness turned down and a blue light filter, an all-white webpage is usually just too much white. > Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. This is just completely opposite for me. Reading in dark mode is only uncomfortable if there's sunlight basically directly behind the screen, while light mode is only really comfortable in high-light environments.

eikenberry 2y ago

Light/Dark modes at their extremes are both annoying. White on black or black on white are both to extreme. The best solution IMO are mid-level colors. I personally prefer the schemes with darker grey backgrounds and lighter grey (or other lighter color) foreground, but the opposite isn't bad either. What are bad is that the default light modes are generally much to light. A random site I have open right now has a background color of #f2f2f2 w/ text color of #151515, it is only tolerable to read if I have my monitor red-shifted to around 4200 degrees (in a well lit room w/ lots of natural light).

rerdavies 2y ago

On my phone I go to dark mode when I'm reading ebooks in bright sunlight. Not sure this a universal experience.

rldjbpin 2y ago

> Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer's day? Can't read a thing, even with brightness cranked all the way up. This. once stuck outside with limited battery and tried switching to light mode. could instantly reduce brightness and still see everything. the nature of lcd display makes it hard to display contrast without backlighting. but the early ones could be effective by showing dark details on a blank slate. this situation brought back my appreciation for having this mode.