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

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

#111

Post by anewguy9000 »

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…

bro you dont need "real data" to convince yourself that water is wet. if you have eyes you can get "empirical data":

go into dark room. read black text on white background. observe how you are squinting and its hard to read. enable dark mode. (you can use something like night mode for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/night-light-m... if you arent sure how). profit.

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

#112

Post by wolco »

coldcode wrote: post #6

95% of what people? I know people of both persuasions in about equal numbers, which makes me question the 95% number. Personally I hate dark mode except late at night as staring at a dark screen and then walking away from my desk makes me dizzy.

This isn't 95% of the population. This is 95% prefer dark becausw the light version is awful.

More of a click-bait title than necessary. 95% of discord users prefer dark would be more accurate.

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

#113

Post by whycombagator »

lloeki wrote: post #104
whycombagator wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Light backgrounds on screens, especially white, tend to hurt my eyes more than darker ones It was (and still is, but read on) for me until I realised that it was not light mode but backlight that was too strong. It was actually initially better with dark modes, low contrast stuff like zenburn, or (solarize light or dark) but only got worse later. The moment I realised that was a backlight (and ambient light, includ…

I usually have the brightness on all my devices very low (10-20% typically, but have to go 100% if I’m outside and it’s particularly bright).

I also use f.lux/nightmode on all devices.

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

#114

Post by stephenr »

zeroxx1986 wrote: post #48

The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark mode with BLACK mode (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - is really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after…

I don’t use any of those apps but I concur with the point: dark mode that benefits the eye doesn’t use a black background.

Which of course contrasts with the “dark mode” for OLED devices, which do use black.

“Good” implementations I’ve seen allow a couple of choices.

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

#115

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

hinkley wrote: post #55
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus you can't burn in what you didn't turn on.

But you can burn in the turned on pixels can't you? Do the LEDs lose luminance with age?

They do sadly, which is why you wanna keep them off, or I suppose burn them all out at the same rate. I know my OLED TV actually does a burn-in balancing once I turn it off.

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

#116

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

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…

White light gives me headaches.

I also work through the dark hours the night. Switching between bright white terminal/app/ide to pitch black, as I do every night, is jarring and, again, gives me headaches. Dark mode should be an option just like every site should be accessible to any assistive technology.

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

#118

Post by chipotle_coyote »

burtonator wrote: post #14
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…

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…

Most of the data that I've found suggests that dark text on a light background is measurably more legible than the reverse. This effect is increased for people with astigmatism -- which is about half the population, so that's not insignificant.

There's a lot of pushback I've seen when studies like that get cited: they're old, they weren't about programmers, etc. And, maybe, but even though we're staring at LCD panels now rather than CRTs, light is light light and vision is vision. It's not about how much light is "shining into your eyes" as much as it is about visual acuity, and it's at least worth trying light mode and just... turning down the brightness on your monitor a little. Also, turning up the ambient light in the room. If your environment is so dark that the backlighting on your keyboard is visible, then you've tacitly designed your environment to make light mode blinding and uncomfortable, so you're not really giving it a fair shake.

I'd like to see studies about whether alternating between dark and light mode occasionally will help prevent your eyes from getting tired as quickly; my suspicion is yes, because it certainly does feel that way to me. But a lot of things that seem intuitively true don't stand up to scrutiny.

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

#119

Post by alpaca128 »

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…

That's why I try to use the Solarized theme basically everywhere. It focuses on low contrast, and that works well enough that I can also handle the light variant without problems. Both black on white and white on black are horrible in my opinion.

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

#120

Post by JohnFen »

__s wrote: post #24
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 not a night owl. I prefer dark mode. It matters when you're staring at a screen for more than 12 hours a day

> It matters when you're staring at a screen for more than 12 hours a day

I stare at a screen for more than 12 hours most days, but I strongly prefer light mode over dark, so I'm not sure the amount of screen time is what makes the difference.

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