Hacker News Reader

Comment by decodebytes | Hacker News Reader

Dark themes are very popular, and it makes sense as they look so cool. I would still encourage anyone to try light themes out, the fatigue you experience is notably less. I made the switch a while ago and really noticed how less tired I felt after a days work.

View on HN

I keep hearing people say this, but after years and years of working as an amateur or as a remote web developer, from my home, in the dark, using dark themes whenever possible... moving to a brightly-lit office job where much of the required software is lacking a "dark theme" has got me to the point where I find my eyes typically burning up after around 2–3 o'clock. when I work on side projects at home after work or on the weekends, I never experience any of this, using dark-themed software in a dim or darkened home office.

Using a light theme, when working at day and a dark theme, when working at night works best for me, I found.

macOS can switch it‘s theme automatically, depending on the time of the day.

Some editors, like TextMate, support automatically changing their theme accordingly.

If you use it: George Nachman, creator of iTerm, announced it will also be able to switch its theme in that manner.

I'm sure other shells and editors support this feature too or will be.

iTerm already lets you do this via the scripting API. Sublime Text 4 just added it natively, prior to this I had a script that would edit the preferences file, which the app watches for changes.

VS Code supports this automatically (https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_42#_auto-switch-the...):

"workbench.preferredLightColorTheme": "GitHub Light Default",

"workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme": "GitHub Dark Default",

I really prefer light, but light theme makers always make them painfully low-contrast (I'm not 16 years old anymore, I can't read that) and, less importantly, have this horrible habit of making comments appear "greyed out" rather than emphasized (but if it were just that it would not be too hard for me to edit an otherwise good theme).

This is one of my complaints about light themes too. The previous GitHub light theme has decent contrast and is what I’ve used when using a light theme.

Yes, this. It’s quite frustrating. This is why I still usually prefer VS Code’s default Light or Light+ themes. They’re a rare breed in terms of having sensible contrast.

I've been working outside quite a bit recently, and light themes are a lot easier to see with the brightness and glare. I don't mind when I "forget" to switch back to dark themes when I come inside.

I need a good Dracula Light theme.

It would be interesting to see some way to “auto-switch” the themes for when you’re inside and outside, using display brightness or light sensors.

Maybe these two can work together to do that on macOS:

https://github.com/insidegui/DarkModeBuddy

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_42#_auto-switch-the...

You should pitch that to Zeno Rocha. He already made the variants in Dracula Pro, he could rename the current Blade them to something else and call the light theme, Daywalker.

https://github.com/Armin2208/Windows-Auto-Night-Mode

I've recently started making use of this app. Since websites and applications are starting to read the Windows dark / light mode setting (VSCode included), my desktop switches dark mode on automatically for many apps and websites in addition to the blue light filter.

Some apps aren't perfect and may need a restart like MS Outlook, but many others work well.

I can't remember the last time I tried a light theme in VS code. But I will have to give them another chance.

Does programming at day/night factor in what sort of theme you prefer?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com