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Comment by hoelle | Hacker News Reader

> Hey nerds: dark theme is dumb. Just light up your space. Eye strain comes from the contrast between a bright screen and your dark room background. Fix your lighting. Or if you insist on being a cave goblin then lower your screen brightness. Dark theme is overrated. Fight me.

Light theme might have a readability edge in daytime / well lit offices. But I'd bet most people using Unity are hobbyists doing it at home in their evening hours, when you want to dial down your blue light for the sake of sleep.

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I'm going to "partially" side with the author on this one, but with a big caveat: a lot of displays simply don't get dark enough to make light mode palatable, especially in low light conditions.

With high quality displays that have good contrast and backlight controls that go "really far down", I prefer light mode UIs nowadays.

But, only a few of my displays can dim enough to make it work in dark(er) rooms. CRTs were great at this, with the brightness control for the raster. LCDs generally aren't, though the fancy "FALD" backlight in my macbook pro does get dark enough to make light mode work well in dim spaces.

I started using light mode more often once I learned about the automatic brightness feature on my monitor.

I suspect that changes in ambient lighting over time are what drive most people to max out their backlight and use dark mode. It generally works in all conditions.

I’ll fight. Dark theme isn’t just a UI preference. It’s an accessibility tool. I have a degenerative eye condition that has progressed to the point where I literally cannot use a black on white display

So I use dark reader on web and get creative with apps that think dark mode is dumb.

It's funny, but I have keratoconus and at this point I can't read white text on a dark background.

If an app doesn't have a light theme, it's very hard for me to use.

That’s wild. Mines a lack of living retina cells from retinitis pigmentosa. I need bright light to see, but bright light causes glare.

I’m guessing hard contacts not helping anymore or not an option? Have a buddy who is maintaining his vision that way.

I'm technically waiting until my vision stabilizes after an operation to get contacts. So it's not quite that bad yet.

I've read that other people prefer dark themes, but for me that doesn't quite work. Something about the light letters glaring (as opposed to the background) just doesn't sit right.

Needless to say, the current era of sleek black/dark apps and dark themes being hip in dev tools is not fun. I do miss them though.

Exactly that. I wouldn't be surprised if supporting a dark colour scheme becomes a WCAG thing, which if it does, it becomes a legal requirement under European digital accessibility laws.

Anecdotally, I just find dark mode more comfortable, even during daylight.

People use dark mode because they think its cool and haxxor like Tactical Knives sell more than regular Knives. The rest is window dressing.

I use it for visual accessibility but I won’t lie, I do think it looks way cooler. My first computer was a 286 with DR-DOS. That could have something to do with it.

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