Laughing Off the Dark Mode Lobby
lloydatkinson.net
lloydatkinson.net
This is usually associated with dark mode because:
1) on older monitors, even CRTs, black was actually dark gray
2) on a 60Hz CRT, white background was a flicker-fest
But, many of today's dark mode UIs choose a background colour that is too dark, and the result is as shitty as light mode.
That wouldn't be that bad if only OSs and WMs kept the ability to customise theme colours (Windows was good on that side, now not anymore, the only exception out of the common ones is KDE) and if applications actually respected OS style instead of delivering their own theme.
> I don't want light or dark modes, I want a low-contrast UI that doesn't fatigue in the long run.
low-contrast UI hurts my eyes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s probably hard to see the green-on-black terminal while wearing sunglasses in your neon-lit office cubicle, but that’s the price of style.
My vision is augmented.
Agreed about Matrix type themes, that's something the joker would use and is obviously cursed - but it ain't proper dark mode.
Now we have the backlash to the backlash to dark mode which is rehash of the arguments in the 90s proving that time is circular.
Cite all the studies about "people are more productive with white backgrounds" and it just convinces me more that I'm not people.
Today screens are so insanely bright that you either have to add a red filter, turn down the brightness, work in a bright room, or use dark mode.
That is the correct answer.
Hold a sheet of paper next to the display when it‘s showing a white (notepad windows or so). Is the display brighter than the paper? It‘s too bright.
At home, the brightness of my display is set to 0 (zero!). At work, it‘s at around 15 and 20. It depends on the display.
Looks weird for fifteen minutes, after that you never want to go back to "burning my eyes out with an energy beam".
LCD TVs and the like often come with the brightness set to the maximum, which is good for impressing people in a brightly-lit showroom but horrible for longevity and comfort.
Tried this, this is a perfect idea. It doesn't work on my laptop (I'm not surprised) but now my desktop monitor is perfectly set. Thank you.
Which is easy, works in all OS, does not require any work from the developer and/or designers and solves the problem at the individual level instead of forcing some type of cultural fight.
It goof for your eye (it is natural!), it is very good for your seasonal depression (if you live in high latitudes, like Canada, North Europe, etc), and now it is easy to achieve with sunlike LEDs.
It was a problem not so long ago,vwhen you needed a lot of expensive CFL lights, like Philips Graphica series with good (expensive) electronic ballast to avoid flicker.
Now it is much easier and cheaper, you only need to sacrifice estetics :-)
All the best conditions for «computer opetators» were studied in details in 1990s, really. What should be lighting conditions, what should be desk hight, which distance between screen and keyboard (say hello to laptops), etc. It is not a rocket surgery, all data are available, there is standards and recommendations («codes») in each developed country. It is shown, that proper workplace could double productivity, for both lathe machinist and computer user.
And why sunlike lamp wil be turnedvon next to me in midnight if I'm at home, in the bedroom (presumably) and not in my working place (on site or remote, it doesn't matter)?
You work from your bed? I have bad news for future your neck, back and hands.
Enthusiasm of people who throw away all this research and work from beanbags in the twilight with laptop on their hips astonishes me.
Edit: ok I do use apps other than a terminal and a browser on occasion. An ebook reader for instance. A great example. If I'm reading a book in bed before I sleep I'm going to do it in dark mode. Don't want the extra lumens before bed.
First thing I bought when I settle on new place were chair, table, monitor and light.
But it (and dark mode) should be exception, not rule.
Many of us refuse to use 5+ year laptop, but why do we agree to crappy workspace and invent dark mode instead?
from this, you can easily calculate that, to illuminate the room to natural, seasonal-depression-affecting levels, you need on the order of 100 lightbulbs in a room that size, which will produce about a kilowatt of heat, similar to an electric space heater ('bar fire' in the uk)
(to calculate it another way, a lux is a lumen per square meter, a 10m² room has about 60m² of surface area, and a typical bright lightbulb emits 1000 lumens, so assuming no directionality and black walls and ceiling, you'd need about 600 of them to reach 10 kilolux. you need less than that because the walls do in fact reflect most of the light that falls on them and the bulbs do in fact have some directionality)
this is clearly an achievable project, and there are several people who have done it, and they report good results. however, 99% of the people reading this comment have never in their lives seen a room illuminated this brightly except through a large skylight, such as in a greenhouse
i've thought about undertaking it myself, but with a couple of tweaks:
- rather than illuminating an entire room to daylight levels, i'd like to try using one of those indoor grow closet things that people sell for growing marijuana, one that's big enough to sit inside of. that way i can use only a few thousand lumens instead of hundreds of thousands of lumens, which greatly reduces not only the materials cost but also the heat removal problem
- lumens are more than an order of magnitude cheaper from fluorescent tubes (not cfl lights—the straight tubes) than from leds, and though the efficiency suffers, it only suffers marginally
- light-emitting monitors, even the current ones whose brightness people are complaining about, are not bright enough for comfortable reading in outdoor environments; if you want to use a computer in there, you need a transflective or reflective screen of some kind
if you're interested in undertaking this project for yourself, my past notes and calculations on the subject are in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/10klux-led.html and https://dercuano.github.io/notes/illumination-cost.html
Today's screens aren't insanely bright at all, due to auto-brightness setting, with devices able to detect the ambient lighting and adjust. You can also control the color temperature depending on tone of day, which became a standard feature. It's not 100% perfect, but has been working well for me with iOS, Android or macOS devices.
My monitors at home and at work do not detect ambient light, and some of them are ridiculously expensive! They, turned up to the highest brightness or even the default (80%?) are much brighter than older screens.
I used to run an older screen and a new one next to each other, and the difference was very notable. Of course they ended up being the same brightness because I changed their settings, but by default, the new one was brighter (because it could).
In all seriousness, this article is as obnoxious as the dark mode zealots. Theme choices are a personal preference, and claiming any sort of objective benefits from either choice is ridiculous. Saying light mode is somehow better, and quoting dubious research to back it up, is the same argument in reverse.
Just give your users the option to choose whatever look they prefer, as customization is always good, and use whatever you like. And both sides should... lighten up. :)
Your post is confusing as it mixes memes with serious personal experiences, and counterarguments based on the same shaky premises of opinions you're arguing against.
(A majority of adults in Europe and Asia also have it.)
One of the side-effects is that light on dark text is harder to read. And now a lot of people seem to use light grey on dark grey, which I can barely read at all, and more, use images of their program instead of text, so tools that rewrite webpages for better contrast can't help.
But mentioning this in a comment thread often gets a wave of abuse. I avoid the temptation to say, "If you're lucky, one day you'll be old like me."
If you want people over 40 to read your writing, please figure out a way to give us a "light mode"! "Today you, tomorrow me."
In the list of related literature I include a paper that found light on dark text is harder to read for contrast reasons.
I've used some dark themes in code editors for 2-3 years about 5 years ago (the decades before had been light themes only, well, actually the default Emacs one, lightly customised) and finally switched back as I realised that I can read a 1pt smaller font better if in light mode than the same but bigger font in dark mode, I permanently switched back to light themes.
And when it's dark outside I just turn on the lights in the room.
I've been using light themes for some time now, after years of dark mode-ing everything. It actually works better for my eyes, at least where I'm able to set the background to be just a bit off-white. And like the author, when I've pasted screenshots into discussions, I've received jokes about my choice. You know, the gifs about people in dark rooms being blasted with light from their monitor. And ironically jokes about eyes burning, when this is friendlier to my eyes than dark mode was.
Seriously, it's your computer, just use whatever setup you prefer. If someone comments, make fun of them for caring about what you use on your machine.
I said that dark mode is not a neutral/inclusive choice, especially for people with astigmatism. If dark mode doesn't affect you, good for you, but the statement is factually correct.
The problem is that many websites simply turn on dark mode without checking what my OS/browser is configured for. That is really annoying.
While I don't discount the possibility of their existence, I've yet to personally encounter an application or web site that only has a dark theme, so the "dark mode only" complaint rings like the perennial "War on Christmas" rant.
This is particularly hard now when many sites use images of program code in order to get syntactic highlighting, because your page rewriting extensions do nothing.
No, it isn't. The article is complaining about people who complain about the author's choice of light mode. Nowhere does it mention any site or application that only supports dark mode.
You mean like just about literally every website (except a few that got shit for being 90s-era design) that forced bright backgrounds on users for the better part of 15 years or so before "dark mode" became a thing?
I agree with the author’s article; it’s not that it’s a never ending torrent of dark mode zealotry, but at least for apps i’ve maintained, one of the first and most zealously pursued requests was always dark mode, even when theming options existed.
I prefer other color schemes and themes; not all white but mixture of softer colors — i have a language syntax file for np++ with lots of soft pastels and coloring for .log files that i prefer as it’s more gentle on my eyes. Usually i can get this with themes or ui hacks (e.g replacing assets when possible), but I’d never pursue such modes as diligently as dark mode enthusiasts do.
i don’t quite see the larger esoteric dilemma on binary design choices like the author did, but i’ve had the same experience of persons trying to “call me out” for not using dark mode in that “joking but seriously why are you doing that” sort of ways; the words were spoken with jest, but the conversation dragged on far past a friendly jab about not using dark mode and just became annoying. It’s probably the only feature with such zealousness and such low usage from my experience, and i also find the evidence of it being “better” very much so specious. Nothing against someone who wants dark mode a lot, that’s fine, just enough with the drama about it
[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho...
To each its own, but don't get me started on syntax highlighting, everybody seems to enjoy their terminal prompts looking like a lit christmas tree!
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize...
The drawback is that some modern tool hardcode the colors assuming that I have a black background, making some text hard to read (especially light-yellow "warning")
Browsers have thankfully accommodated for such subjective preferences even without site theme choices though via reader modes and userstyles (whether browser or user-forced).
Also a big fan of apps that respect my system settings and don’t hide the option somewhere, so if i’m out in bright sunlight i can easily turn it off
* In a brightly lit environment, light mode is preferable, but dark mode is serviceable.
* In a dimly lit environment, dark mode is preferable, whereas light mode can be downright painful.
So I run light mode during the day and dark mode during the evening/night, but if I had to choose one it'd be dark mode, because it never actually hurts my eyes to look at it.
As an aside, night time screen usage used to keep me awake. When I started reducing my screens to very low brightness levels (sometimes even lower than what the manufacturer provides settings for), that problem went away. Don't quote me but I may have run across some research at one point talking about how total lumen exposure has much more impact on your sleep than the red light/blue light thing.
But if you don't get it and you want to hurt your eyes, hurt my eyes, and inflict insomnia on everybody, well you can be like this guy who writes snarky posts about his Discord pals I guess.
Just wondering if you have any thoughts.
We used to call it “themes”, a term that encapsulated a wide array of design options and user preferences. Now, we have “modes” as if those preferences can simply be boiled down to a binary choice. Sure, the usage of the word “theme” hasn’t vanished, but it’s certainly taken a backseat to the narrow-minded focus on only giving users a choice between light and dark user interfaces.
I remember when UIs defaulted neither to "light" nor "dark", but were a neutral gray; look at Windows from 95 through 2000, and Mac OS from 8 through 10.x.
What has changed over the years:
* usage times of modern screens goes way up: watch (very bright OLED with tiny screen), phone (OLED), tablets (very bright Mini LED) , laptops (very bright Mini LED, LCD), desktop monitors (LCD) and a desktop TV (OLED) connected to a computer
* most are high-res screens
* shorter viewing distances
* lots of video conferences and usage of networked software
* darker surroundings in home office especially during winter, brighter surroundings during summer. I have the OS switches modes based on day time / brightness.
* eye fatigue after a long day looking at screens, brightness sensitivity during illness caused by infection
In darker surroundings, at home, in the evening, I prefer nowadays white text on black backgrounds. For example an OLED TV as a desktop monitor.
For home-office work I bought a bright desk LED lamp (max 5000lm) with lots of indirect light. The quality of LED lamps has increased lately (no flicker, dimming and color modes, auto dimming, lots of indirect light, networked, can be configured with an app). I like that a lot. There I don't use dark modes. I also have increase usage of pen+paper for notes.
This discussion and article come across deeply offensive.
”In one former (and brief and very toxic job), a manager and one of his lackeys suggested that my usage of light mode was indicative of a lack of professionalism and seriousness about my work, as if this choice somehow reflected on my competence”
Taking it to its conclusion (had they bothered to read the article) they would realise that the article is about dark mode zealots not dark mode users (of which I sometimes am, and I have astigmatism).
People really are reading half articles these days.
I even provide a link to a paper on this too.
I.e. it's an accessibility issue to some people, so don't laugh it off as "just a preference" or try to beat down any disagreeing voices with studies on only healthy eyes.
People should 100% use what they prefer. I have a good friend who uses light themes for everything. We don’t rib each other (too much) over it.
If anyone has experience with light sensitivity issues though I’d love to hear any advice or thoughts. Daylight is one thing but monitors, which I need for work, destroy me.
What model?
I always make sure that my monitors are set so that a full white screen is comfortable to look at indefinitely. (With this in mind I find I enjoy light mode themes more than dark mode ones. YMMW. (Obviously blacks should be close to real black with this setup for proper contrast. All in all, a well calibrated monitor should be a joy to look at no matter the color theme.))
A crutch bypass to that is switching on HDR from system settings and turning down SDR content's brightness. It'll display the dull white the developer most likely intended while also not breaking software (and media) that does colour better.
Personally I have found dark modes with color schemes like, say, Dracula are visually pleasing immediately but over time become tedious and I notice a pattern of decreased mood that doesn't happen with light modes. So, I use software that adjust screen light based on the time of day rather than dark modes.
And yes, I admit I have used that "oh no, it burns!" joke when someone shares the screen and everything is white :P but until now it makes _me_ look like the odd one
I don't object to this as a default, so long as it's optional. It probably works as intended at saving whatever tiny fraction of world energy use.
Speaking of green things, I faintly remember green and amber monochrome monitors being marketed as reducing eyestrain. I assume white phosphor was more expensive, or just couldn't be used as a gimmick.
The values are only "light" and "dark." What If I prefer a blue color scheme? Or green? Or even pink? We don't get that for some reason.
By the way I want pumpkin mode. Orange and green. Two colors. It's 2024 we should have the technology to have a theme with two colors by now.
...says the author of this article.
I'm under no obligation to read everything to completion. Your piece gave strong signals of being a poor fit for me, so I disengaged from it. Which is exactly what I said in my comment.
> I can guess both of them feel strongly about dark mode.
Again, this comes across as disproportionately hostile. I've already noted I don't have strong feelings on this topic, but you insist on interpreting everything as partisanship.
No, it's a lobby to make dark mode happen.
Jesus, it's ridiculous sometimes. You don't even have to force dark mode or anything, but why refuse to offer customization like it's some moral high ground.
Can we just ignore them all?