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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

#221

Post by makecheck »

The main problem with this being a “mode” is that I don’t want it in 100% of cases. For instance, on the Mac it was originally possible to darken only the menu bar but now that is only allowed if everything is dark. Frankly, in many cases it makes more sense to mix these effects, e.g. it might also be nice to have darkened sidebars in lighter windows.

Another reason I don’t want it on all the time is because a lot of things still have really terrible Dark themes, to the point of being eyesores. It is amazing how much more the choice of colors matters in dark themes, and if this is wrong it is almost unusable.

Some web sites had long used primarily-light or primarily-dark themes, and it is now weird that some of them try to “adapt” to your dark/light “mode”. Frankly, it usually looks worse when they switch to their less-refined alternative and I would rather they either put a lot more effort in to both themes or just keep the original look in all cases.

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

#222

Post by saltcured »

crazygringo wrote: post #107

Dark mode is great when you're using a screen casually close to bedtime and don't want a painful bright light. It's also great when you're doing image or video editing and need to be able to see full contrast in the dark areas, without being overwhemlmed by bright light surrounding. But it's objectively far worse if you're reading significant amounts of text, for the simple optical reason that light bleeds inside of…

A reasonable approximation for the primary optical effects would be a gaussian blur and it will produce a visual effect like "dark bleeding into light" just as well as "light bleeding into dark". Total energy is conserved under the blurring function, so light spreading out to the neighborhood leaves less light to perceive as being at its true source location. So, the light source seems darker at the same time it makes its neighbors seem brighter. Without uniform reinforcement from its all of its neighbors, the light area will seem to dim.

I think that several other comment threads get closer to the truth of the matter. Your experience will be quite different depending on the dilation of your pupils. Most people have better acuity in bright environments where their eyes behave more like pinhole cameras. Not only does the pinhole have better depth of field than a larger opening, but most people will have more higher order aberrations in the periphery of their cornea. That is why they will see artifacts at night more than in broad daylight.

With a properly balanced viewing environment, you will have the same acuity for light on dark or dark on light, because the ambient lighting should dominate your field of view and set your pupil dilation. The screen should then be bright enough to fit comfortably in the same dynamic range as this environment.

Another factor is screen surfaces, and what people perceive in the dark/black areas. If you use glossy screens, you are more likely to notice distracting and non-uniform reflections in the darker areas. With a matte screen, you will mostly just have reduced dynamic range with the environment affecting the whole screen as a more uniform noise floor. Smudges on touch screens may also affect someone's perception of solid colored screen areas.

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

#223

Post by burtonator »

sojmq wrote: post #153
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 haven't read the article but the Discord light mode is TERRIBLE. Terrible contrast and half the interface remains in dark mode. That's why I don't use it. Otherwise I would. So it's kinda forced dark mode for Discord. That stat can not be trusted. https://i.redd.it/qre9cvey3r0z.png

They fixed it... I talked about it in my post.

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

#224

Post by chipotle_coyote »

geoelectric wrote: post #213
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My astigmatism gives me doubles in any high contrast situation, whether light on dark or dark on light. Solarized/Zenburn type low-contrast palettes are the only thing that really addresses it.

I've noticed that when my eyes are tired as well. I think well-considered low-contrast color schemes don't get enough love, and I'm still a fan of Solarized, too. (Although my favorite schemes, both light and dark, are Spacemacs'.)

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

#225

Post by swah »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #147
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Disagree. I work remotely so nobody ever sees my screen except for me. I prefer dark mode because it's more comfortable on my eyes.

I kinda like dark mode on darker days, but if I'm jumping from the IDE to a light webpage like this one every few seconds, then a light IDE is much better.

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

#227

Post by mygo »

RobLach wrote: post #152
ARandomerDude wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I work remotely so nobody ever sees my screen except for me. I prefer dark mode because it's more comfortable on my eyes.

Dark mode objectively is more straining on the eyes though, so it must be more of a psychological preference.

This is not true. If you are in a room at night with all the lights off and the only source of light is your computer screen, you want as little amount of light coming out of that screen as possible to reduce that contrast ratio between the computer screen and the ambient darkness. The only exception is res light due to the way the eye works. White backgrounds, which consist of all the red green and blue pixels, add more strain onto the eyes due to giving off more light. Given equal backlight, white backgrounds give off more light than black.

In fact the single greatest thing that computer manufacturers could do to improve the lives of night-time workers and people who use their computers with the lights off would be to switch to OLED screens, where the black pixels do not use backlight. As someone who studies human vision, I took special note of the improvement when I switched to a phone that uses an OLED screen in dark mode. There, with white on black text, the white text is the only thing in the room giving off light and it’s a drastic improvement.

However if the colors do not matter (you can deal with monochrome text and images), then using a true “red mode” will produce the least eye strain. Check out F.Lux’s “darkroom” color effect. You’ll feel the difference instantly. You’ll be able to comfortably see what’s on the screen in the dark with the screen as the only light source, as well as be able to quickly scan around the room without your eyes needing to adjust! You can even turn up the brightness much higher than you can without it.

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

#228

Post by p_l »

rsynnott wrote: post #187
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Dark Mode looks more like a terminal and signals "I'm a real big-boy hackerman" or something. I suspect this is a big part of it. The interesting thing is, terminal emulators flipped to light backgrounds when it became practical (for instance, see the Solaris X11 one, or, later, Apple's one). The reversion to white on dark was a later thing. I'm inclined to blame Microsoft; their Windows terminal emulator never wen…

Generally early GUI systems were black-on-white monochromatic, but switchable (and easily so, for the whole system). The thing is, which one is really better depended a lot on personal preference AND ambient light - and original systems supported both, but often assumed brightly lit room.

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

#229

Post by p_l »

avian wrote: post #197
inciampati wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe people who spend most of their working lives alone, staring at screens, are picking dark mode because it's comfortable, not cool. There is no one around to impress. It's ok if you don't get it, but that doesn't mean it's just a fad. It's cool to be comfortable, and now easier. OLED screens invert the default behavior of a screen from light to dark. It'd be absurd to fight the comfort that this can provide.

CRTs were default black, yet we went from dark to light backgrounds during their heyday.

Text mode terminals used black background, so did XY displays which used memory tubes. When graphical, bitmapped high resolution displays arrived, they nearly universally were white background with black text - but trivially switchable (starting from late 1970s)
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