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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I really dislike the trend of pushing dark mode as a default on everything. There's at least some evidence that reading retention is higher with dark characters on a light background, and I think the preference for dark mode often comes from people sitting in badly lit environments, or having their monitor turned up to bright.

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There's a trend of following your device's dark/light preference, but I personally haven't seen many site pushing dark-by-default.

I've seen this more and more, but I wish sites would provide a way to switch themes. For example, the Ghost blog default theme follows your device preference, but AFAIK there's no way to toggle to light mode, which is quite annoying considering how common it is.

Yea, that's frustrating. I'm a bit surprised browsers don't have built in exceptions for this.

The unfortunate trend is people producing otherwise useful educational Youtube content (particularly developers) in dark mode. They surely don't realize they are losing some portion of their audience due to any of a few reasons (not the least of which is the audience who actually works outside sometimes!)

It's good for phones that have OLED/AMOLED screens, since it saves quite a lot of battery life. It's also good if reading in bed (with the lights off).

On a desktop though I prefer to use blue-filters at night, and nothing during the day.

However for those sensitive to light I assume dark mode is a lifesaver.

It depends. I’m very light sensitive and can’t stop squinting even on cloudy day outside, but common light on dark makes my eyes get tired in minutes on any screen quality. Light scheme, night mode and brightness zero+ is what I’m using in bed.

On subj, I wish such sites to publish their colorscheme css that would be easy to modify and drop into stylebot (iirc that extension name). It’s often a couple of colors and a background that have to be adjusted besides defaults to look good enough. We’re all different.

Here's a tip - whether in light mode or dark mode, you can turn your screen brightness down.

If I read HN at night my screen brightness turned to the lowest is still too bright so I add an additional screen dimmer and use Dark Reader

On iOS there’s an option to “reduce white point”. This way you can get reallly low brightness and low contrast on your phone. I’m using it often during night. I suggest to add a accessibility shortcut to the triple click home to toggle it

..and conversely I hate the trend of pushing black text on a white background. I have severe photosensitivity, and even in a brightly lit room with a monitor set to 75% brightness large patches of white background hurt my eyes to the point of building a migraine.

What service is dark mode the default on?

Discord.

Not a service, but VS Code.

of the software I've just used today, VsCode, Discord, Spotify, Facebook since the redesign.

As far as I can remember Spotify has always had a dark colour scheme hasn't it?

I think one of the older iOS apps wasn't light-on-dark, but for a very long time, yes.

https://spotify.design/article/reimagining-design-systems-at...

Facebook and VS Code are probably using dark mode because you have set your system and browser theme to dark

VSCode dark is default. You can switch to light modes if you wish, but it starts out dark. At least in that app you have choices. Fortunately most modern editors and IDEs give you options.

Terminals and text editors have had dark themes as default for decades. This isn't a new trend. Spotify also has never had a light theme since launch (10+ years). Facebook (and 99% of other software released today) goes by whatever your browser/OS preference is.

Some ms windows docs turned dark recently, afair. Can’t remember which, but it often turns up when troubleshooting their fantastically clear 8001fcd8 etc error codes.

> reading retention is higher

I would be shocked if that's replicable.

This article makes references to that point: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/

It's not the default what are you even talking about?

> There's at least some evidence that reading retention is higher with dark characters on a light background

Genuinely interested to know where you have seen this.

Perhaps from here or referenced here: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/

My theory is people use them because they look cooler.

I'm okay with it as long as it's customizable. What I dislike is when apps or sites don't give you the choice.

I like my operating system UI/chrome to be dark, but my documents (including Web pages) to be dark on white. This is becoming increasingly difficult to do, although you can force Firefox into reporting light mode to every page if you have to.

Blasting white light into your eyes from every pixel that isn't information is totally backwards and stupid. Light up that which represents something, not the background.

Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like if the cosmic background radiation was the brightest thing around?

Light isn't bad for you, which seems to be the premise of your argument.

Perhaps staring into a light for a long time is more problematic? I certainly find it more draining on my eyes to use light UIs for extended periods.

Can your eyes tell any difference between diffuse and emitted light? If the background on your monitor is roughly the same brightness as the white painted wall behind it, what's the difference to your eyes?

I'll guess that your screen brightness is set too high.

Eye, Wikipedia: "Eyes detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons."

When your eyes detect light, they have to do work. Electricity and chemicals are expended and recycled to pass the information on to your brain. The less light your eyes receive, the less work they have to do.

Similarily, the screen blasting the light with LEDs consumes more energy the brighter the light is. White is literally the most expensive color to both produce and process.

Additionally, excess light at times of the day when the Sun don't shine messes up our evolutionary psycho-biology, causing issues with sleep.

So yes, light is literally bad for you, in this context. Natural sunlight is different because your skin needs it to produce essential vitamins.

> The less light your eyes receive, the less work they have to do.

Or, the less light you receive, the more work they have to do focusing.

> LEDs consumes more energy the brighter the light is

The opposite is true of LCD screens. But that isn't relevant.

>excess light at times of the day when the Sun don't shine messes up our evolutionary psycho-biology

What about not enough light at times of the day when the sun should be shining? The light from any monitor is insignifcant compared to that from the sun anyway.

Lack of light is thought to be a cause of myopia, or in other words, light is literally good for you.

>...excess light at times of the day when the Sun don't shine messes up our evolutionary psycho-biology, causing issues with sleep.

That is folk wisdom in the IT field. At best, it is blue light, but there aren't enough long term studies to conclusively say this. BMJ Open Ophthalmology published a study in 2018 that said blue light could be a factor in eye tiredness, but it also stated dry eyes due to lack of blinking for long periods a more serious cause of eye strain. It also noted very small fonts, low contrast, and medical conditions like uncorrected astigmatism and presbyopia as factors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020759/

Human eyes don't have good night vision, we see best in daylight.

Black text on a white background is best, since the color properties and light are best suited for the human eye. That’s because white reflects every wavelength in the color spectrum. Because of the reflection, our irises don’t need to open as wide to absorb the white light. That leaves our irises in a neutral position and allows us to see with better clarity. This is especially true when white light is contrasted against black, which absorbs wavelengths instead of reflecting them.

Light text on a dark background makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. When this happens, the light letters can bleed into the dark background and cause halation, which makes the text blurry. Our eyes focus better when the iris is narrow.

Additionally, most people are born with some form of astigmatism, a misshaped cornea that blurs vision. For people that have the worst forms of astigmatism, light text on dark backgrounds aggravates the condition. When looking at a light display, the iris closes more, decreasing the effect of the deformed cornea. When using a dark display the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the cornea makes halation worse.

On the flip side, dark mode helps with floaters, tiny fibers or spots that appear in a person's vision. These are caused by changes to the fluid in the eye which cause shadows to be cast on the retina. Floaters distort vision in light mode. This condition tends to increase with age.

Also, people with light sensitivity might be better served by a dark background.

Both light and dark mode should be offered for accessibility reasons.

> Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like if the cosmic background radiation was the brightest thing around?

We'd probably be dead. This also has nothing to do with dark mode.

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