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Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

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Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#341

Post by rpozarickij »

wincy wrote: post #94

I was a big believer in dark mode for a long time, until I started trying to reduce my SAD symptoms during the winter time. I read this blog post here [0] after seeing it on HN, and ended up buying 28 100W equivalent bulbs and a 500W equivalent corn bulb. I get a pretty decent amount of light in my home office now, and light mode is essential on my workstation or it's almost impossible to even SEE anything on screen,…

> higher brightness monitors

There's also an emerging market of RLCD (reflective LCD) monitors which don't use internal backlight but instead rely on external light. If the monitor receives enough light the image is pretty sharp (they _need_ external light to be usable).

They are mostly available in bigger sizes but their resolution isn't great yet (I haven't seen higher than 1080p). But it seems that due to different technologies used, the text should be quite smooth and not that pixelated.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#342

Post by npc12345 »

causi wrote: post #292
KaiserPro wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, darkmode, and the bluelight fear is not really based on that much science. Yes, UV and top end blue does cause cataracts in people, but thats from the sun, not monitors. There are at least two strands to darkmode, one is the "It stops me from sleeping" and the other is eye strain. the sleeping part is almost certainly nothing to do with the colour temperature of the light coming out of your device. If you go ou…

The moon casts blue light. Moonlight is not blue. In fact it is more red than sunlight. https://i.stack.imgur.com/72dkh.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/4wtWq.gif

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Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#343

Post by fwip »

chronogram wrote: post #21

I thought that was obvious and dark mode was a meme about gamers not having sunlight while having their monitors set at maximum brightness so they use dark mode to reduce glare. Like the whole sunlight is burning, quick close the blinds joke. OLED mode on my phone is definitely a treat for battery life, but then darker actually means less light instead of dark coloured light.

Nitpick - both OLED and regular LED monitors emit less light when the screen is dark/black. The LED monitor is doing it less efficiently (because the LCD screen is blocking the backlight), but it's not "dark coloured light."

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#345

Post by comfypotato »

causi wrote: post #292
KaiserPro wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, darkmode, and the bluelight fear is not really based on that much science. Yes, UV and top end blue does cause cataracts in people, but thats from the sun, not monitors. There are at least two strands to darkmode, one is the "It stops me from sleeping" and the other is eye strain. the sleeping part is almost certainly nothing to do with the colour temperature of the light coming out of your device. If you go ou…

The moon casts blue light. Moonlight is not blue. In fact it is more red than sunlight. https://i.stack.imgur.com/72dkh.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/4wtWq.gif

The comment you’re responding to is nonsense. They clearly don’t suffer from severe insomnia. Dark modes have been a godsend for me when it comes to falling asleep.

There’s no doubt that the stimulation from something like TikTok as opposed to reading a Gutenberg ebook has more to do with the content than the light emitting from your phone. The notion, however, that the light of the phone (or other screen) has nothing to do with mental stimulation is utter nonsense. Brighter light is more stimulating. Period. The details of blue light versus dark mode are completely secondary to the primary concern of a bright white screen with black text opposed to the opposite.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#346

Post by Sunspark »

laserlight wrote: post #289
Sunspark wrote: post #159

I like dark mode very much these days even during the daytime because I find staring at a bright white screen runs the risk of triggering a migraine. Dark mode screens don't do that. The contrast between pure white backgrounds and pure black text is too stark and causes greater eyestrain when it's directly transmitted light as opposed to reflected light. Displays in light mode that are reflective do not have this kin…

> Turning down the brightness on a display is not really the solution because most displays use pulse width modulation so you are just exchanging brightness for flicker and strobing effects. Thanks for mentioning this. I've never understood why people preferred dark-mode over reducing brightness of their screen. Perhaps, they are disturbed by flickering on a subtler level that they are not consciously aware of.

One way to dim the screen without activating PWM is to leave brightness at 100%, but in the monitor's panels change the custom preset for the RGB channels to a lower value like 50%. It basically has the presentation of a neutral overlay filter. There is technically some dynamic range compression, but it's a perfectly serviceable solution for systems where you have no ability to install software like f.lux, or when you don't want the overlay to be warm.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#348

Post by suprjami »

tmtvl wrote: post #259
suprjami wrote: post #248

I've read a couple of other posts about this (below) so I finally decided to give light mode a try for a week. I've switched to all Solarized Light terminal/editor/Firefox/GTK and turned off dark mode in the websites where that's a setting. https://stitcher.io/blog/why-light-themes-are-better-accordi... https://medium.com/codesphere-cloud/should-you-really-be-cod...

Solarized Light was my gateway drug to light mode, and I later switched over to using Modus Operandi in Emacs, which really made me appreciate proper light themes. If you use Emacs and/or Konsole you may like it.

That's cool. I've looked at the Modus themes before but I think the light version is a bit too light for me. All-white pages are so bright they kinda hurt my eyes. Maybe I need to turn the monitor brightness down...

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#349

Post by notfed »

hans_castorp wrote: post #212

I absolutely loath dark mode. My eyes hurt after 1 or 2 minutes when I am forced to read things in dark mode. I even installed a plugin in Firefox to disable dark mode on sites that don't allow this (or do not support "reading mode" properly)

And my eyes hurt after 1-2 minutes when I am forced to use light mode. My life is better after realizing this.

Clearly everyone is different. It's discouraging to see the number of people in this thread not understanding this. I'm glad the general consensus in technology is to offer us customization.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#350

Post by heavyset_go »

gsich wrote: post #329
heavyset_go wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, these aren't perfect and symptoms of astigmatism can be aggravated by eye strain, dryness, allergies, poor lighting, etc even with correction.

So how you know that this is related to (and only to?) astigmatism?

There are vision defects that are attributed to misshapen lenses/cornea that seem to be common with astigmatism, and it's those defects that flare up under the conditions I listed in the OP.

I don't have conclusive proof, of course, but in my experience it is those symptoms that get exacerbated.

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