Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

getpolarized.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 234 posts

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#71

Post by melq »

nck4222 wrote: post #23
burtonator wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I tried to find more data but it's scarce. I would love to get more data for more apps as I think it's definitely biased around people who spend a LOT of time staring at text. I'm a programmer so spend a ton of time in my IDE. Polar is designed for people that read a LOT so dark mode really matters to them. When you're reading 100s of PDFs having a dark mode is kind of important! In retrospect I'm kicking mys…

I would say you have an interesting article here, and your user poll is interesting too. But like you said you don't really have the data to back up this claim, so it just comes off as really click-baity. It worked, as I've never heard of your product and am clicking around the site now, but it's disappointing none the less.

I think it would be fine if the title just said "95% of our users prefer dark mode" rather than trying to generalize it to all people.

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#72

Post by the_pwner224 »

Razengan wrote: post #12

I wish HN would get a dark mode, and I don’t know why major apps like WhatsApp etc. are still dragging their asses over dark mode support while smaller apps with more complex UIs have already supported it for months.

You can use the Dark Reader extension for Firefox on computers & Android, which makes all sites dark, or the Stylus extension which allows you to load custom site-specific stylesheets. Stylus allows access to a big repository of community-made themes and there are surely some dark ones for HN.

These both are likely also available for Chrome.

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#75

Post by wrs »

USNetizen wrote: post #61

Am I the only one where "dark mode" interfaces really screw with the eyes?

No, you are not. :) People have been looking at dark words on white paper for quite a while now with no ill effects, and I’ve never felt an inclination to invert the relationship. Even in 1980 I preferred the very few CRT terminals that operated in “light mode”.

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#76

Post by vidarh »

silon42 wrote: post #11
tlb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to dislike dark backgrounds, but now I have several apps set to dark mode. But going way back to the 80s, terminals were mostly dark mode. CRTs mostly looked terrible with bright backgrounds until the Mac. I don't know if my own change in preference is due to underlying change in screen technology, or something else. Screen time might affect it too -- maybe people prefer light mode when they're only on-screen…

There was blue mode for a while. I remember using of Norton Commander, Turbo Pascal, where blue mode was the default and quite popular.

I suspect a lot of that happened because people started adding color when color monitors became a more common option, and blue being the least offensive of the alternatives available if you wanted to add a background color...

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#77

Post by jfaat »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #17

While I also prefer dark mode overall, the majority of dark editor color schemes strain my eyes more than light ones. Primarily this is because they use really bright saturated colors or solid white text on dark backgrounds, which makes my eyes strain as if they are looking at LED headlights during a night drive. OS X uses nice muted yet distinct colors on both ends of the brightness spectrum. I wish I could find an…

I've been a huge fan of tomorrow night eighties for the same reason. You may like it too.

example: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Them...

JetBrains compatible version: https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/J...

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#78

Post by Insanity »

whack wrote: post #10

It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society. I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an…

I'm a night owl and dislike dark mode. Prefer solarized light theme everywhere :)

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#79

Post by whycombagator »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #65
whack wrote: post #10

It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society. I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an…

> I've noticed that most techies do prefer dark mode, and I also recall reading that techies are disproportionately night owls - I wonder if there's a correlation there. If I may be mildly unflattering for a moment, I think it's just a trendiness thing. Dark Mode looks more like a terminal and signals "I'm a real big-boy hackerman" or something. If someone has real data showing it actually causes less eyestrain or so…

I'm sure everyone has their own specific reasons. And what you suggest might be true for a subset of individuals. For me, I prefer dark mode for a couple of sight related reasons:

- It makes my eye floaters much harder to notice

- Light backgrounds on screens, especially white, tend to hurt my eyes more than darker ones

Re: Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

#80

Post by JeremyBanks »

whack wrote: post #10

It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society. I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an…

I'd definitely take the Discord data with a heap of salt: I prefer light themes, but I use dark in Discord because Discord's light theme is terrible and hurts my eyes.
Post reply on HN