Dark Mode Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Dark Mode Sucks

tomechangosubanana.com

110 points4dm1r4lg3n3r4l159 comments

Without taking an extreme or absolutist stance on this issue, I generally agree with the author here. Dark mode should be reserved for after sunset and before sunrise.

The eyes are adapted to see daylight levels of light during daytime. If your ambient lighting and screen don't match this, then you're not using your body in the way it's evolved to function. What we need more of are screens with anti-glare and a wide range of brightness levels.

What might have a worse impact on your eyesight is the effects of Myopia, which is being exacerbated by basically every portable device with a screen. Anyone who has the technological literacy to enable dark mode (and advocate for it) is likely someone who gets above-average screen time and is therefore someone at a higher risk of myopia.

Dark mode should be reserved for after sunset and before sunrise.

Well, I'll meet the dark-mode people halfway, and say that it should always be available to users who want it.

No one is saying that a personal preference for dark mode is invalid, just that it shouldn't be the default option, or worse, the only option.

Dark mode already isn't the default option across a vast majority of the entire internet.

There are easily 10x if not 100x as many sites that only support their default of light mode as those that even offer built-in support for dark mode, and it's more like 1000x as many as those that default to dark mode.

TFA does seem to be explicitly demanding erasure of the preferences of an insignificantly tiny minority of websites.

> Dark mode should be reserved for after sunset and before sunrise.

Isn’t that already how it works in all major operating systems?

Indeed! I also recognize that it would be even better if more apps and websites supported this.

No, it’s only configurable. And many people like myself leave it dark mode permanently unless in a bright place.

I think the debate comes down to how bright you keep your environment.

OP likes bright overhead lighting and confuses that preference for the superiority of a preference downstream of it. Yawn.

I’d rather look at a bright 27” screen in dark mode where I see full color fidelity than dim the screen so that bright backgrounds aren’t too harsh. But it’s just a preference.

It’s definitely not only configurable. In macOS I have it set to change according to time of day.

Do you have a source for any of these conjectures or is it just vibes?

>evan, I agree.

Hate the dark.

Dark is hard to see. Light is easy to see. I use light at every opportunity. Dark partially grew out of an interest in saving battery power on early oled screens, but dev's noticed a certain demographic drawn towards the dark look.

I learned a bit about that historical context from this long-form video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJFC5UfmoY

Dark versus light, in general, is fascinating. My fiancee and I have really different light sensitivities. She'll struggle to see in dimmer/only natural light indoors and I'll be able to see fine. Turning on overhead lighting really bothers me and causes a stress-like reaction. I'm much more amenable to artificial light after sunset and if it's indirect, diffuse light (i.e. a standing lamp).

Black and white on a screen are not that different when it comes to emissions into eyes.

It absolutely depends on what you do, for any work involving computer imagery, a dark surround, i.e., dark UI, around the area of interest, e.g., 3D Viewport, 2D Canvas is a must so that to not bias the work. This one of the main reason why Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Autodesk Maya, Blender, The Foundry Nuke, Autodesk Flame, Baselight Filmlight, etc... all have dark themed UI.

> for any work involving computer imagery, a dark surround, i.e., dark UI, around the area of interest, e.g., 3D Viewport, 2D Canvas is a must so that to not bias the work

Depends on if you target a dark or bright ui. If you target a bright environment then you want to work in a bright environment and vice versa, otherwise you bias the work for the wrong environment as you say.

I have older eyes. I'm sure someday in the next few years I will have cataract surgery.

Light mode is lower contrast for me, and is more difficult to read text, especially at the end of the day.

Dark mode is a relief, and much easier to read for me.

I miss it in the situations when it is not available, like PDFs with small grey text on a white background, more so on a small screen like a phone.

Some people think dark vs light is opinion, but for some it is not.

more: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/

- dark mode may present some advantages for some low-vision users

- in users with normal vision, light mode leads to better performance most of the time.

- applications meant for long-form reading (such as book readers, magazines, and even news sites) should offer a dark-mode feature

I was surprised they did not mention astigmatism. Light mode is clearer than dark mode with astigmatism.

I don't disagree with most of your message, but it seems lack of sunlight is as much (or more) to blame. You can use dark mode AND go outside as much as possible. The blue light emitted by a screen is no substitute for the ball of fusion in the sky.

This is one of the worst class of articles that are posted on hn. These articles make very confident claims based on their own opinions, are extremely short and make no effort at all to back up their confident claims with any sort of reasoning or data.

And are so wrong it hurts

Yes, but we could at least have good discussion prompted by that, until someone flagged the article.

I wasted my time typing a constructive comment, while the article was flagged in the interim. Now I'm just going to close HN and not waste more time.

I have good news for you, the article is back in business, and the discussion is happening!

Agreed. Reading that article in dark mode still made my eyes hurt.

> your ambient lighting is crap . That will kill your eyesight

it is a myth that dim lighting negatively impacts eyesight long term.

That depends entirely on what you're doing in that dim lighting. And how much time you spend in it. Spending all of your time in dim lighting is absolutely bad for your vision, or at least that is the contemporary consensus in optometry.

[Citation Needed]

No it does not depend on what you're doing (eg reading) in the poor lighting- that is precisely the myth.

At least before you are grown up - that’s absolutely proven truth.

Until you are an adult - you must get outside light (even if it’s overcast winter). On average - luminosity (I hope that’s the term) outside is orders of magnitude above indoors, even when it’s overcast.

Kids without enough light have much bigger risk of shortsightedness. Because eyeball development is related to light.

There was even an article about this on HN couple weeks ago.

This article has barely any substance at all and its claim is unsubstantiated. Honestly, I'd hazard to even call it an article; it is four sentences and a fragment.

Just make it configurable. It's not that hard. The only thing I want to hear less about than light vs dark, tabs vs spaces, is the dripping condescension of morning people.

Make it configurable and let people be.

exactly, people have preferences, i don't get how this turned into white vs dark mode supremacy war with people seething and attacking each other over what should be a boolean config setting

Wikipedia, you can solve this with one line of code. Just changing one variable name...

Seriously, the fact that light vs dark is even an issue is silly. It only exists out of laziness and that's what we should really be mad about

While I agree that it's not as complicated as some make it out to be, let's not pretend it's just one variable change.

  > let's not pretend it's just one variable change.

On Wikipedia it literally is: change 'skin-theme-clientpref-day' to 'skin-theme-clientpref-os'

I don't think you know what you're talking about. That looks like the setting you would change specifically on the Wikipedia site. There would be additional code and CSS behind the scenes to enable that functionality. For example, where is the color palette defined?

The discussion is about site owners making light/dark mode configurable. Your first reply reads like you're saying that Wikipedia has an article for how to implement configurable light/dark mode on a site. I now think maybe you just meant "Here's how to change the setting on Wikipedia, it's so easy!" which still misses the point and is not easy for most people.

Maybe if you link to the Wikipedia page you're talking about that would help. I can only find variables like the above in documentation about templates and themes. That wouldn't be helpful anywhere outside of Wikipedia.

I might be too naïve but

  > For example, where is the color palette defined?

There's literally an option for "auto", "light", and "dark" on each page. If changing the default value from "light" to "auto" is not a single variable change then honestly I believe there are bigger issues. There's a master template in their code where they set the default option...

I'm saying it's silly to have an "auto" option and not making it the default. I'm not sure how this is anything but laughable. But again, if I'm being naïve here, I'm happy to hear the reasoning. If I'm naïve then it means I'm in need of being informed.

  > That wouldn't be helpful anywhere outside of Wikipedia.

Well that specific complaint was about Wikipedia. I'll stand by that Wikipedia should change from a default value of "light" to "auto". Unless you have a compelling argument against this?

There are other websites that have a toggle and don't read the browser or os theme. That might require an additional few lines to do so but let's also not pretend that's hard.

If your website doesn't have both a light and dark theme, that's out of scope of my complaint. My complaint for those is: if using a template site that you didn't create, use one with this feature, there's millions. Else (you didn't use a template), please add this feature, the fact that these fights exist is irrefutable evidence that people value both options. It's evidence that there's very strong preferences and the work isn't useless (though may be hard to measure its effectiveness)

  > Maybe if you link to the Wikipedia page you're talking about that would help.

You can visit any article on Wikipedia and you will see the options for this on the right side.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News

> There's literally an option for "auto", "light", and "dark" on each page.

That's not defining a color palette, which would probably go in CSS. You're describing a UI selector. It doesn't "define" anything related to implementing the functionality.

You're still missing the point of this entire thread. Go back and look at the top-level comment. I think there might be a language barrier here or something, so I'm going to bow out. Good luck.

  > That's not defining a color palette, which would probably go in CSS.

Yes?

The css is already defined. Dark mode works!

The problem is which theme is loaded by default.

Please, tell me how I'm being dumb. I don't want to be. But you've given me nothing to change my mind. I'm a native English speaker, but I don't think it's English that's the problem here. I don't think you understand what I'm saying, though if you feel the same then I hope you can recognize I'm trying my best to establish an understanding. I have no idea why you're making a big fuss about the CSS definition as we're strictly talking about Wikipedia where that definition is already defined and I honestly do not know how to be any more clear that my complaint is to which template is loaded by default.

Wiki already has the functionality for dark mode, but loads the light mode as default. They even have the Automatic option, but the user has to select it, so, it's like semi-automatic. They really are just single line modification away from true automatic light/dark mode.

filter: invert(1);

Or, my dark mode for HN:

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { html { background-color: #000; } body, td[bgcolor="#ff6600"] { filter: invert(1); } }

My current problem in Windows is there’s at least 3 system functions, PowerToys and screensaver places vying for control somewhere that I have to manually turn on the Dark theme on when signing in every morning.

Seems like a self-inflicted problem. You can turn off Light Switch in PowerToys. I don't know what screensaver software you're using, but if it's hijacking the setting maybe consider uninstalling it.

Why even limit ourselves to a binary choice? Back in the Windows 9x and earlier days, you could individually color every class of thing on the screen. Window backgrounds, title bars, scroll bars, buttons, text for this, text for that, everything could be a different color if the end user wanted it. How far we have backslid where offering just "dark" and "light" is now seen as some sort of favor to the user!

We should return to those great days of end user control. "Sensible defaults, but easy to override." Why can't I easily (without writing code) configure HN's background and text color, just through my browser's configuration UI?

If only YCombinator could hear this and decide to do something about HN...

> Fix your lighting instead of bullying the rest of the Internet into eyesight-damaging practices.

Is there actually any evidence to support this claim? As far as I know, bright screen and dim room usually leads to eye fatigue and eye strain, but these are temporary issues. As far as I understood, any claims that computer work leads to long term vision problems are largely unfounded. Am I missing something here?

I view dark mode as basically an accessibility tool. Provide the option of light/dark mode to your users so they can choose what works best for them. I prefer dark mode for most things, but what I’ve actually found is that I just don’t like pure white backgrounds with pure black text. It’s just that a lot of light modes are exactly that.

Your comment is the first one after many to talk any sense.

I recently had an encounter with a sight impaired person that had less than 10% left of his eyesight, and his exact words were "dark mode makes my experience easier".

Since meeting him, everything I do when it comes to UI, I try to be more mindful.

Agree. For me it only works for IDEs and code editing, and even there with a carefully calibrated colour scheme and a (not too dark) grey background. Otherwise, it's like reading neon lights in the night. Anyway, as someone pointed out, our vision evolved to see dark signs against a lighter background, not to see light in the darkness.

I used to be one of those setting everything to dark mode, custom CSS and all, but I am now cured. It was a difficult time as my eyesight was rapidly deteriorating to the point that I thought that I would need to change carers to something not involving computers. I am so thankful that it is over. The source of the problem was that I had been consistently over-prescribed by different optometrists. I don't blame them, but something must be off in how they were trained. To avoid this issue, do not use regular progressive lenses in your eyeglasses. Instead ask for an "intermediate distance" formula optimized for the typical distance between your eye and the computer monitor. In practice this is a depowered formula supposed to be used only for computer used, but I used it all the time. On my next checkup my official formula had decreases confirming that it was too strong in the first place. I know don't have to use dark mode, and my vision is much better in general (I'm in my 50s). And don't over use your phones!!

>I don't blame them, but something must be off in how they were trained.

No, you should blame them. To this day optometrists will prescribe children glasses despite there being an ample body of evidence that working at distances closer than your far point with full-strength glasses will worsen myopia.

I kind of wish white showed up as that manila bookish paper color. I think my eyes read that better than white. But I dont mind dark mode either. I wouldn't never say its mandatory though

Like the background of Hacker News? This is why I've been using f.lux of equivalent since it first came out. Not so much because of all the blue light stuff, but because it's the better "dark mode" anyway (IMO).

Default background for early web was light gray specifically because black on pure white is kind of hard on the eyes.

I’m not a huge fan of dark mode on the desktop personally, but the people who claim #000000 on #FFFFFFF is equivalent to a paper book are misguided.

I use the OS provided Night Light feature everywhere for this, and my eyes are loving it. I have it set up to follow the day-night cycle, so during the day it doesn't get overly sepia.

Yes! I use "Dark Background and Light Text" addon for firefox, where you can set the colors yourself, which I did. I use #FFF2cc (I'd like to call it sandy) as my background color for nearly every website (even HN). (+permanent night mode, +blue light glasses that are orange-tinted, so your mileage may vary)

No idea why this extremely poor "article" is getting so much attention on HN. There is a time and place for dark mode. For certain demographics, default dark mode may be more suitable than others. And letting the user change it covers all bases.

For example, on my site [1], I default to dark mode (not pure black though) and have settings for changing the theme to: Pure black, Light mode (white), and 2 custom themes which are off white, and a dark blue background.

I picked dark mode as default because my site is directed towards tech people (it's for STEM + Arts and Design) and thought dark mode works well for that theme.

[1] https://limereader.com/

wow that was a huge waste of time, why write this or post it?

Because the internet is for everyone, and it turns out that this content resonated with enough people for them to even upvote it enough to end up on the front page.

Then I guess my question is less about the author and more along the lines of the demographics of HN. This is stupid, why was it on the front page?

Because so many sites insist on shoving dark mode down their readers' throats, despite decades of reliable, repeatable human-interface research that has unequivocally demonstrated that it's the wrong thing to do.

Any other questions, or are you short on time to waste yourself?

Edit due to rate-limiting: It should, but apparently doesn't, go without saying that using a terminal is very different from reading a web page.

Is your terminal black-background-white-text?

EDIT: It's not different

(removed my snark edit since you were apparently rate-limited but my point stands)

Author seems very angry that people are solving a problem in a different what than he’d prefer

Dark-mode and light-mode are both so popular as user preference, that apps and sites should make sure at least stock light and dark modes work well, out of the box. Noticeable examples of needing improvement:

* Default light and dark themes of programs/apps and sites that have illegible low-contrast color combinations. Very common, sometimes within themes they control entirely but apparently never tested both light and dark themes. (For example, the non-customizable foreground color a calendar program users to indicate task priority doesn't change when the theme changes the background color to dark. Or the terminal app thinks that yellow is a foreground color to use for highlighting warnings, and apparently the author has never heard of terminal windows with white backgrounds.)

* Bluesky's delayed page-loading full-screen interstitial of small butterfly logo against white backdrop, rendered when they know the session is in dark mode. If you've in dark mode in a dark room, winding down for bed at night, this is awful. I occasionally notice lesser problems like this with streaming video UIs, but not as consistently jarring/blinding as Bluesky. (Almost as awful as the movies/shows on home video streaming services that throw in gratuitous strobe light scenes. If it doesn't give the customers seizures, it stil can't be good for their sleep cycle. At least Bluesky's unnecessary sudden blinding white doesn't strobe.)

If your sleep is important to you (and it definitely should be) you should not be watching movies or browsing bluesky immediately before bedtime. If you are doing so, I don't want to hear complaints about how these apps are affecting your sleep. It's on you.

How about we simplify the point: Support light-mode and dark-mode, and don't mess it up like a vibe-coder.

There’s a significant lack of self-awareness necessary to criticize a group of people for using hyperbolic language and then rebut them with unsupported claims about “eyesight-damaging practices”.

I have eye floaters. Dark mode saved my career.

You don't like it? Don't use it.

I had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease a few years ago. It temporarily changed my eyesight in a way that made black text on a white background entirely unusable.

Having dark mode as an option is an easy accessibility win. On the other hand, not having light mode as an option is just pure laziness in 2025.

Dark mode actually saves a lot of energy and thus battery time on mobile devices. It's more practical, cheaper, and good for the environment. I don't get the hate in this article.

Only with OLED or AMOLED screens. (And even then, not sure i would say "a lot")

Many of these haters have astigmatism, which makes the dark mode hard to see for them. I don't think all of the people who have this realize they have this, so, it gets directed against the dark mode itself.

You are probably going to get astigmatism or cataracts (which also make dark mode hard to read), too, if you live into your 60s.

fascinating… I have severe astigmatism and I exclusively use dark mode always, the opposite is hard for me. I did not even know that many people with astigmatism struggle with dark mode

Maybe there are other factors too, I'm not very sure. When there are thin light lines on a dark background, that's really hard to look at for me. And strangely, the same dark lines on a light background don't bother me at all.

I've started using a sepia tone filter for my phone screen which solves this nicely for bright websites. It's in the accessibility settings and actually it's 25% opacity orange but really improves everything. Even dark mode websites look nice with it. It just evens everything out a bit and gives it a warm feel.

Anyway, point is, the onus is on the author of this rant to adapt to his circumstances. Not to expect everyone to change everything for him.

This is the privileged majority punching down at minority, not unlike an abled person whining about the existence of accessibility options, or a native-born American complaining about government forms also having a Spanish section after the English section.

There's a reason that extensions like Dark Mode¹ have 10,000,000+ installs while no "Light Mode" extensions can even exist as far as I can tell: more or less the entire internet is already light-mode by default, with no option even provided by webmasters for dark mode for those who want it on a vast majority of websites.

What I can't comprehend is why the people who already have light mode as the default across the entire internet can't be content letting people with a preference for dark mode even exist without aggressively trying to erase the preferences of people who don't feel the exact same way as themselves.

Further, for anyone using OLED panels, which is a non-insignificant portion, black backgrounds reduce power draw and therefore global carbon emissions. Light backgrounds literally accelerate climate change, however marginally.

¹https://darkreader.org/

I was going to comment that it’s a bit weird that dark mode is viewed as a new or special option. But someone else already wrote a whole article on that point [1]

[1] https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/a-brief-history-of-dark-mode-fr...

I occasionally get requests from readers to add a dark mode to my blog - https://simonwillison.net/ - and I'm never sure how much priority I should give those, as someone who almost never chooses to use dark mode.

Dark mode fans: does it really bother you to read white web pages?

Yes. Although something in-between works as well.

Not me -- I can fire a Reader mode that will give me the dark appearance.

Yeah, it does. It's not the worst in the world but dark mode my eyes relax and I can better enter flow-states. Too much non-dark mode and I get eye floaters.

Probably has something to do with having an all black background on desktop / IRC, terminals, steam since 1996/1997->now

Even MSN Gaming Zone where I started was 'dark moded'

Yes. I have Dark Reader[1] on by default for all websites and only disable it when it activly breaks a site, or a site has a suitibly dark theme and Dark Reader thus flips things the wrong way.

If a site is borked to the point that Dark Reader can't fix it, I'll use reader mode or just go somewhere else.

Your site looks just fine to me.

[1] https://darkreader.org/

Yes. There's a reason that https://darkreader.org/ has 10 million+ installs while no inverse extensions even exist to my knowledge.

The entire web is already light-mode first and much of it, including your site (no offense) offers zero built-in support for the provably massive demand that exists for dark-mode color schemes.

I have a friend who uses a dark mode extension, but has it configured to make everything light mode.

That's awesome. I'm glad your friend is able to benefit from community-provided solutions to a real problem that many people have, even in ways perhaps not originally envisioned by the authors of Dark Reader.

Your friend's preferences are valid and there's no reason for anyone to be vindictively espousing vitriol at those preferences, just like the preferences of the majority of users of this extension who prefer dark mode.

I also use Dark Reader and read your articles often. Some sites look terrible with any Dark Reader settings, but yours looks fine.

I'm sure there are still plenty of people who would appreciate a site toggle for dark mode with a theme of your choosing.

YES

I'd guess so, yes. I think dark mode users leave the screen brighter than it should be, because in dark mode, it doesn't matter as much as it does in light mode. Then, after looking at dark things for a while, the eye gets used to the light level, and then opening a white page is like a supernova happening in front of the user's face. In short, with dark mode, the lightness baseline is much lower, and a light page disrupts this.

I'd say it's more of a courtesy thing. If you like a bit of a web design challenge, you can experiment with the prefers-color-scheme CSS feature. With this, the browser will automatically apply the dark mode for users that have it set, making the experience seamless (and state of the art).

This assumes low light conditions are bad for the eyesight. Which _may_ be a thing for children, but that's where the science ends.

Just let people enjoy things, if you don’t like dark mode, don’t use it.

I think that's also his belief, but he's currently bitter and angry about how dark-mode evangelists are not doing the same.

It's not about light/dark mode, it's about giving both options and letting the user choose.

It’s just a preference. They really annihilated those strawmen, though.

Calling their preference “normal” is annoying. Clearly the alternative is quite popular given that they want to complain about it.

Any good program allows color customization.

Dark mode looks better on CRTs and OLED, screens that have real darks.

My eyes are extremely sensitive to light so dark mode with a yellow filter is my preference. Too much of the wrong light triggers a weird dissociative-type response in my head and feels terrible. I’d be interested if anyone else uses dark mode specifically for this reason.

At the same time I have pretty extreme myopia and astigmatism which, from what I’ve seen, makes me an ideal candidate for light mode.

On e-ink I 100% prefer light mode (dark text) to be preferable though.

Weird how argumentative people get about this though. Feels like vim/emacs level stuff.

It’s a godsend for people with legitimate vision issues, such as eye floaters.

Second this

Helps against my photopsias as well.

As someone who use an eink Android device frequently, I'd appreciate it if every website that uses dark mode by default to have a least a toggle between light/dark.

And do test that the toggle works properly for syntax highlight code blocks: for some websites, the toggle does not change the color of the code block and I had to resort to Chrome's reader mode.

On Linux and iOS I use Dark Reader to fix badly programmed sites. It almost always works.

Yeah, dark mode is really worse for the eyes almost everywhere. I make an exception for terminals.

I tried many times to like it. When I used to have web conferences with my dev team, I'd have everyone use a light theme for their IDEs when I wanted to read code on their machines, because the clarity was so much better than with the dark themes.

This post is a self-described "rant" which doesn't contemplate why some people prefer dark mode (I prefer light mode myself), but let's make something constructive out of it:

Please consider the comfort of your users: sufficient contrast, sufficient text size, and when feasible, a choice of dark mode or light mode.

I only prototype in dark mode (my strong preference), to cater for both would be a waste of time.

Ironically, my eyes can't take dark mode and I suffer all the issues proponents of dark-mode use against normal mode with it.

I've had to install Stylish just to have control over those websites that think they know better than me on what's good for my eyes.

> Dark Mode Sucks

Light mode sucks the same. I need contrast damn it. I need to be able to select my background and foreground color like in Win 95 (or X wimdows with Xt).

I've been convinced by my team that unified light mode is a good idea.

There's always a website, a person screensharing, a shared screenshot or something else that is light, and it WILL bother you if everything else is set to dark.

A dark thing in otherwise light settings doesn't produce the same issue, therefore adapting your settings for light work is more protective.

My main issue has been finding good light color schemes, particularly for neovim. Most have awful ideas like light yellow colors over light background, that I suspect come from just porting the dark mode to a light background as an afterthought. All of the themes I use have a few adjustments in my config.

I purposely switch to light mode for screenshots just to troll. And like a same person (not saying I am one just cosplaying) I adjust my windows to the ambient conditions.

Didn't expect Hacker News to be so easily rage baited.

What bothers me is when you copy something from dark mode, and then paste it somewhere normal and you see unreadable background-styled text ■■■■■■■■■■■■■.

Paste unstyled: CTRL+SHIFT+V, or the Mac equivalent.

I so wish it was possible to make paste unstyled the default. 99% of the time I want paste unstyled, not paste styled.

Yes and to make it worse, sometimes the unstyled paste shortcut doesn't work. For example, in Microsoft Notes.

I've never had that exact problem, but I often do <C-c> (copy) <C-k> (search bar) <C-v> <C-a> <C-x>.

At least in Firefox, pasting into the search bar kills all formatting. This motion is easier than it sounds and you can do it really quickly. Or, you can just use shift like the sibling suggests, but I never remember and it seems to still fail at other things

If someone is counting votes for dark mode in these comments. Count me for dark mode. Just remember everyone is different.

Have a look to the cursor website. Everything dark gray on dark background. I’m unable to use it without an extension to change color…

Dark mode is for when it's dark. People who use it at midday are quite mad in my opinion, unless it's Iceland in winter

Even though most[1] 'Dark Modes' don't work for me (in the sense that everything just turns into a muddy blur and I can't make sense of anything anymore at all), I do realize that's entirely a personal thing, and I do make a point of respecting the user's preference in the apps and sites that I ship. Small price to pay for being neighborly, and a lot less passive-aggressive than "didn't anyone explain to you how to turn down your display brightness?"

[1] With the exception of that weird Windows 11 theme option that keeps the main window content 'light' yet turns most OS affordances 'dark' -- that one is oddly pleasing...

The only dark mode I like is in my console of choice.

Unless I want to emulate a Solaris console, which has a lovely font.

Ok you don't like dark mode.

I love dark mode, and I don't like light mode. Everything is dark mode on my machines, day and night.

I find it stupid to have so much light beamed into my face, and I prefer to only light up the useful signal. The letters and numbers, and graphs. The 99% of background is of no interest and as such it doesn't need to send light to my face.

Side note: if you're autistic -> this article isn't for you.

I rarely flag articles, but this one was garbage and made the cut.

I suppose you never heard of floaters, let alone experienced it.

Someone needs to read about the effects of artificial lighting

I mean, there is not much substance in the article, but I agree. I don't like dark mode too much either. I read that people with astigmatism, so cylindrical sight, don't handle dark mode well. I'm not sure how true this is, but it definitely applies to me. I can't seem to properly focus on many dark mode UIs - with spreadsheet software being the worst.

What I found is that using light mode, reducing screen brightness, adequate ambient lighting, and applying a brown filter works really well. Each of these components add an immediate relief when I'm applying them.

Funny thing is, I'm experimenting with dark mode in some places. In my KDE, it seems to work well for me in general OS UI, and in my file manager. Also works well on my phone after dark.

What I especially dislike is the mixing of dark and light modes. For example, when everything is light mode, only the terminal, and the IDE are dark. Fuck that. For this reason, for many years, I had my terminal in light mode as well.

True. Use dark mode or don’t, but stop going on about it.

You often don't have a choice. Not without being forced to tinker around with your browser in ways that aren't readily accessible to many/most users.

What us dark-mode haters are really asking for is a simple option to click.

Is it though? Most apps I am using are following the OS/browser preferences or are light mode as a default. One of the more notable exceptions is Discord, but that is largely explained away by the fact that the gaming focused audience often demands dark modes.

Also, the dark mode setting in mist browsers is one search entry away. I really don't see the problem here

Well, I guess that's fine for the "gaming-focused audience," then.

For the benefit of the rest of us, explain how to turn off "dark mode" when viewing specific websites that are hardwired to use it, while running Safari on iOS, or in Firefox on desktop, without installing various extensions that may not be available to users at work, or changing the way the whole OS appears.

Edit due to rate-limiting: The Firefox theme has absolutely nothing to do with how a web page is rendered. Select the light theme and go to Hackaday, or a logged-out Mastodon page, and you will find that it looks exactly the same.

Same with the peanut gallery that always pops up with helpful advice like "Just change your OS theme." Even if that would help, which it wouldn't, I'm not going to change the global OS appearance to accommodate a few asshat web designers.

> while running Safari on iOS, or in Firefox on desktop, without installing various extensions that may not be available to users at work

Basically all browsers default to follow the operating systems appearance settings. I don't know why you're specifically asking to not change the OS settings, why would you prefer dark mode of your OS when you want the websites to be light mode?

To answer your question, I have no clue about Safari, but in Firefox you go to the settings page and right on the start page there is Language and Appearance where you can select your theme.

> when viewing specific websites that are hardwired to use it,

Yes, that is an issue. But that is not an issue of dark mode per-se, it is an issue with software quality and design decisions themselves. Some apps might implement their own theme switcher (which they should not do, but people seem to like making their own worse implementations of browser standards), others might not implement a dark or light mode to begin with.

I've never seen a browser force dark mode on you as they all seem to default to light mode. Same with the OS.

It's also easily configured in Firefox.

I think that's the point of misunderstanding. At the risk of sounding like an LLM, this isn't about a "mode," it's about the infuriating choice made by web designers who hardwire their pages to dark themes.

So, no, it is not "easily configured in Firefox" or anything else running on the client side. When I visit various sites and have to squint at the text, that's 100% on the site designers. It may be fixable by various third-party extension hacks and kludges with numerous drawbacks of their own, but reskinning the site itself isn't something the browser can (or should) be expected to do.

Ideally, sites where the admins prefer light-on-dark text should follow Wikipedia's example, which really sets the standard IMHO, and give users a choice -- auto, dark, or light mode. Here again, 'mode' refers to an option provided by the site, with nothing whatsoever to do with client-side chrome. They are basically just giving you the option of using different curated style sheets, which is great.

It's hard to symphatize with the "dark mode hater" when it's only the very minority of websites that enforce dark mode without respecting user choice, as most websites enforce light mode without respecting user choice (including HN).

Install Darkreader, enable Light mode

https://darkreader.org/

I think most users are capable of that :)

for what it's worth, my ophthalmologist recommended I use light mode only, with reduced blue and red (because red light actually activates the blue cones too apparently)

Then my screen time started affecting my sleep so I still use dark mode at night

But anyways all software should be configurable and follow the parent software (browser, OS) by default, css even allows for that now. There is even a "prefers-contrast" property in order to design for people who need high contrast stuff.

That article needs way more meat.

I’d recommend this classic for a read: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/whic...

Tl;dr dark text on a light background is usually easiest to read. Note in dark mode, you often see font bolded to compensate for the readability drop.

Almost ever major website dosent use dark backgrounds for text for a reason.

I personally like a dark mode UI (menu bars, dock, and so on), so it’s less distracting, but light mode for content.

So does Youtube's new Theater Mode.

I have no ambiant lighting. I have my window opened or the CO2 level gets bad. If I get lights, all the fucking insect existing in the forest will come in my room. Or I can get a fresh breeze while being on my PC in the evening.

With Dark Mode.

I think providing both a light and dark mode is overkill, lead to odd bugs, and some weird color combinations. A lot of eng time lost here.

Providing both is not a complicated thing, especially with support in CSS, browsers, and frameworks. That is, unless one designs websites that are so complex and buggy already that supporting a second color scheme costs "a lot of engineering time".

I think I disagree.

Just correctly executing on color scheme is a lot of work. It seems obvious that 2 themes will be 2x the work.

There is a lot of images that will require 2x the work if you want to it correctly. Let’s say screenshots of an UI in a tutorial.

This post makes me want to start a site to collect the worst-ever takes shared on HN. Right now this would be at the top of the list. ;)

I support the article's idea only because I believe that dark mode standardized modern layouts and in a way, killed creativity.

You do realize, people can be sitting in the dark right? Right?!

Isn't changing the monitor brightness and color temp a better solution for that?

Even the minimum brightness is too bright.

Many screens, especially on laptops and phones, don't have subtle enough settings

Yes, making weird color profiles can get you much closer, if you're able to and your device supports them, but often not close enough

Huh. The built-in night functions on both my Windows and Mac laptops work well and can go super orange. My Mac laptop dims to black at the lowest setting...

I can't read the article since the server returns a 404 (not found). I'm guessing it was too much of a hot take that it had to be removed.

"Dark Mode" is a theme, and themes are the lowest form of software feature.

Maybe I'm weird, but I just stick with whatever the default is per app. Discord and Spotify and MetaFilter dark, Slack and Gmail and HN light. It feels strange switching either to the non-default, but have no preference for either as a whole.

  > If normal mode bothers you so much, it says one thing: your ambient lighting is crap

It's easier to change software than hardware. My screen only gets so dim.

It's easier to change software than the sun. Neither its brightness nor when its up or down.

Wikipedia, why the fuck do you have "auto" if it's not the default? I've never wanted to slap someone in the face so much.

But seriously, we can detect the desktop setting trivially. We have options!

We can both win here!

There's no reason for a war here, yet one still exists. Light mode sucks because the designers suck. Stop being so lazy. The vast majority of templates have an auto toggle! You have to go out of your way to remove it. If you're going to do things by hand, you have even less of an excuse. There's no "one size fits all" and it's clear there's significant numbers of people that like both styles. So do the "hard" work, especially when its not hard

Stop being so lazy.

And if you're mad at me calling you lazy for not adding the option, then you'll be more mad to know I think you're the problem.

If I were 20 I'd agree. Dark mode is better on the eyes

It’s not. Not under all conditions. I’m nowhere 20 anymore.

Funny, I am sitting here in a dark nordic country, turned off my lights to vacuum about 15 minutes ago, with the dyson laser lol. I open HN and the first thing I see after my eyes adjust to the flashbang is this link at the very top of the page. :D

I agree with the author - I'm sick of hearing the cliches from people who prefer 'dark mode'. But I remember long before there was 'light mode' and 'dark mode' there were themes based on a spectrum of hues and values - actual colors. Why not bring that back? "Light mode" can be way more bearable if it's not pure #ffffff. I dislike the invented dichotomy of light and dark anyway, there's an entire spectrum that designers can use, and I think apps in general would look way better if they took advantage of that.

There are many light mode themes just like there are many dark mode themes. They even have colors.

Yeah, yeah, it sucks. Unless you have some particular vision issues. Then it doesn't suck, but this enlightened opinion does.

it does, and so does using a screen in the dark. bright room, low brightness, high contrast, light mode - your eyes will thank you later.

The best dark mode impl i ever saw: https://web.archive.org/web/20240101060519/https://tonsky.me...

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