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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

Strong disagree here. Many apps don't implement dark mode in the way I want. They seem to think dark mode is for conserving battery life on OLED displays and make the majority of their UI #000000. That's not what I want. I want a subtle shade of grey. I'd rather choose light mode for an individual app if that app doesn't implement dark mode correctly.

Another point is that some types of content just don't work with dark mode. Maps for example. I have used multiple apps that use maps or present data on a map. None of the maps look good when dark. As such I always turn off dark mode if an app displays maps as part of its main user journey.

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> That's not what I want. I want a subtle shade of grey.

Does your preference change if you reduce your screen brightness?

Bright features over a really dark background can be unsettling, but that's about screen adjustment, not really about the software colors.

Anyway, I do argue that people shouldn't just pick #000 and #fff by default. But that's because if you are already using the extremes of your palette, you can't get a more extreme one when you need to emphasize something. The arguments on "unnatural" colors and visual preferences all seem baseless to me, because those numbers don't correspond with any actual physical color, they are all relative.

About dark maps, I've seen it done well. Exactly once, and I can't point you the software because it was embedded and I don't remember what the device was. But as hard as it seems to be, it is still possible.

Interesting, this is the first time I've heard that opinion. For myself, I get annoyed whenever a dark mode isn't #000000; it's not about saving battery, it's about the pixels being off, which I find more readable. (I got an OLED specifically because it makes it more comfortable spending time in a terminal.)

Can you say more about your use case and why you prefer gray over black?

Black is too much contrast. The high contrast simply hurts my eyes. For a gray theme nicely done, look at the GitHub gray theme (called "soft dark") as an example.

Fascinating. Different use cases for different people. On GitHub, I use the default dark mode ("dark default") and then enable "high contrast", which makes the background black. (I also get annoyed when light modes are dark grey on light grey, rather than black on white for maximum contrast.)

There's a CSS preference for contrast. It seems easy enough to handle `@media(prefers-contrast: low)` and set a gray background. The contentious part would presumably be the default; I would have thought #000000 was the obvious default for a dark mode but apparently that's not what everyone prefers. Ideally, OSes and browsers would expose controls for this in a straightforward way, the way they handle dark mode. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/A...

Sure, but the default for any app should be to use the setting from the OS/DE/WM and only diverge from that if the user consciously decides to alter it in the app's settings (in whichever direction).

My understanding is that white on pure black can be troublesome for people with a certain level of astigmatism as they will experience halation, which can make things appear blurrier.

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