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 overcast day, whereas light mode feels like a bright sunny day. 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. I suspect though that this preference is reversed for the general population.
> 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 something, I'm willing to change that opinion.
Discord has one of the worst light modes I've ever seen. Until recently, the sidebar taking up 20% of your screen on the left didn't even change colors, it remained in dark mode regardless of if you swapped. Also note that the role colors most servers assign contrast way too poorly with light background (bright yellow on white). And dark mode is the default. Worst example to try to extrapolate from.
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.
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.
> I recall reading that techies are disproportionately night owls
A "night owl" is someone who enjoys being awake and active at night more than the average person, but most people who describe themselves as "night owls" still spend most of their waking hours during the day, especially when they are working, especially if they work in software development at a normal 9-5 job.
Need better evidence to believe this stat too but I do prefer the dark mode personally. For what it's worth, I've been running the dark mode on my site for almost 3 weeks now. 60,000+ visitors since the change and no complaints for now.
If system-wide themes really worked, I'd probably be switching now and then between light and dark themes. Dark mode is kind of gloomy but it's also easier on the eyes.
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 myself not working on this sooner.
The recent trend of introducing separate "light" and "dark" modes is a band-aid solution to the larger problem: modern interfaces lack contrast. Everything is either mostly-bright or mostly-dark, and I find both physically tiring.
I was playing around with a virtualized copy of Snow Leopard last weekend. Coming from modern macOS, what I find most visually striking is always the range of tones. The beautifully deep gray window chrome fades into the background, and pushes white content to the forefront without rendering it blindingly bright. Colored accents on interactable elements make the interface easy to scan. When I squint, I can still see everything.
You'd never consider adding a dark mode to this interface—or at least, I personally can't imagine what one would look like, because the interface is neither light nor dark to begin with. The result is far easier on my eyes.
That's a great point -- before Microsoft introduced "flat design" which everyone else then copied (both Apple and Google), there was both a lot more variation in background colors and varied usage of color generally.
I understand and sympathize with the philosophy behind flat design -- that it intentionally puts the interface in the background (low contrast, less variation), so whatever content you're consuming (photos, videos, book text) is the focus.
But I also sympathize with your point -- that when you want to use the interface to do stuff rather than merely scroll through content, it's simply harder now.
It's novel right now, just as dark-on-light displays were novel when Lisa and Macintosh were introduced. Also, I suspect nostalgia (or anemoia) is involved.
However, research shows that dark-on-light (positive polarity) displays are better for most people most of the time, with some exceptions.
Personally I can't stand dark mode. It literally hurts my eyes. Strain after a few moments and interlacing ghost lines that linger in my vision for a minute.
Does anyone else have this?
Is it brain cancer?!
edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer.
Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.
Dark mode can cause strain on eyes. Lower total brightness means your pupils open up to be able to take in more light. Wider pupils means lower depth of field, i.e. less stuff in focus immediately in front of/behind whatever you are currently focused on. You are more susceptible to having to refocus from subtle movements with a lower depth of field. The less of a steady state your focus, the more the muscles involved in focusing are engaged, which might be a cause of the strain you are feeling.
Similarly, this is why your eyes can hurt while reading in dimmer settings. It's not because low light itself is somehow harmful while reading, but because your eyes have a harder time staying focused as you naturally move while reading.
edit: I adopted light themes everywhere after reading this, probably https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268 . Knowing depth of field from photography helped this make sense, as well as understanding (from conversations with a doctor in my family) that the generic feeling "strain" is most likely associated with muscle activity than anything else.
Astigmatism, possibly? IIRC, dark mode is worse for most users (though they may not notice it, and the placebo effect is powerful in this sort of subjective rating) but it's particularly bad for people with severe astigmatism.
I don't know many people my age who can still handle dark mode.
It was easy for me many years ago. I looked at command lines all day and no problem.
Now I see blurry lines for 10 minutes all around me if I have to spend any length of time in a command line interface, or look at an article in dark mode.
This is, unfortunately, an accessibility issue, not a design issue.
I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer.
I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal.
My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha.
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 a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast.
I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the Dark mode (which is, again, BLACK mode in reality).
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 lenses, including in your eyes -- that white "pollutes" black but not vice-versa.
Thus with black-on-white text, letterforms stay separate, clear, and legible. Any light spreading simply makes the letterforms appear, say, at 10% brightness instead of 0% brightness. Zero problems with legibility, still plenty of contrast.
But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. Now granted, if you're 15 years old with perfect vision, it may not be particularly noticeable or objectionable. But the older you get or worse eyesight you have, the more it becomes a big problem.
So dark mode is nice to have, but for most apps going dark-only is objectively bad for accessibility, and legibility generally.
> But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read.
I, uh, don't see a halo. Never have. I see streaks/starbursts, kinda like this quora post [0], except I've seen streetlights like that my whole life (so I don't think it's an eye problem like they suggest). Maybe that influences why I find dark mode easier on the eyes? No blurring, but it's also not sharp enough to cause the starburst.
Objectively, your vision is a subjective thing. The default is dark on light. After trying the opposite some people decide they like it better. Are they wrong? Maybe they feel better, and the demand for configuration over color and hue in UI is a normal response.
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.
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.
I'm definitely in the camp that light / dark mode should match the time of day or ambient light level. I love having "light mode" in the morning, but at night I always prefer dark mode. But this is because I have a huge amount of ambient light in the room in the day, and at night I have none. Dark mode is unreadable to me when the bright sun is shining on a monitor. Not so with light mode.
In the old days, apps simply used the system color scheme. That allowed one to globally choose what they wanted. Now everyone has to implement light and dark “skinz.” Color me not impressed.
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.
After trying both light and dark themed interfaces for a few years, I concluded that for me there's only one setup that works: light theme with low brightness (monitor setting) and 'flux'/'night light'. That way, my monitor looks just like everything else in my office, like reading a newspaper.
That's one of the many ergonomic improvements that help me stay alive.
Yes, I think that's the sanest choice. Also doesn't require a lot of theming (and some applications don't have themes) or other weird stuff (inverting colors on pdfs?).
Also reducing the backlight saves battery.
But I still think that a little bit more low-contrast would be nice.
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 IntelliJ theme that matches the same spirit.
I far prefer dark mode for "chrome" and OS theming, etc. but not for documents. So the idea that just because I have dark mode selected means I want every site to look like a porn site and my emails to all have back backgrounds is very wrong. I want normal documents, just as they were, but with a dark theme around them.
This seems like something where 'cheap talk' is a serious problem. You're not even surveying or polling users, you're hearing from self-selected ones. And even if you get a representative sample, what people say is different from what they do: users may not even know if they genuinely prefer it. Lots of design is subconscious, and there are measurable effects like additional milliseconds in loadtime where I doubt anyone would ordinarily be able to notice without sitting down with a stopwatch - it just feels worse.
If it is really impossible to support more than one theme in the long run, this seems like a perfect use-case for an A/B test: randomize half your users into dark-mode and half into light-mode, and track total attrition and activity over the next few months (and not some proxy variable, switching to dark mode is too important to use some unreliable intermediate measurement).
this is frustrating because I have diplopia and so my life looks like: https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png when you have white text on a black background. This affect doesn't happen on "light" mode systems...
I only have a few apps on my old Mac that have a dark mode UI. Pixelmator is one of them and the small tool windows blend into each other and it's hard for me to discern their boundaries. And I strain with the tiny text on them. I really wish it had an option to turn that off and rarely use it because I can't.
I don't like it at all. Makes me wonder if it's because I'm getting old and my vision isn't aa sharp as it used to be.
My main monitor has a "low blue light" setting that I do like though. It took me a bit to get used to it but I can really feel the difference if I turn it off now. I've since adjusted my two peripheral monitors to lower the blue light settings and that's helped reduce eye strain a lot for me.
[+] [-] whack|6 years ago|reply
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 overcast day, whereas light mode feels like a bright sunny day. 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. I suspect though that this preference is reversed for the general population.
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|6 years ago|reply
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 something, I'm willing to change that opinion.
[+] [-] __s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _kxbd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sojmq|6 years ago|reply
https://i.redd.it/qre9cvey3r0z.png
[+] [-] loopdoend|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Insanity|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john-radio|6 years ago|reply
A "night owl" is someone who enjoys being awake and active at night more than the average person, but most people who describe themselves as "night owls" still spend most of their waking hours during the day, especially when they are working, especially if they work in software development at a normal 9-5 job.
[+] [-] markosaric|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jolmg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burtonator|6 years ago|reply
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 myself not working on this sooner.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|6 years ago|reply
I was playing around with a virtualized copy of Snow Leopard last weekend. Coming from modern macOS, what I find most visually striking is always the range of tones. The beautifully deep gray window chrome fades into the background, and pushes white content to the forefront without rendering it blindingly bright. Colored accents on interactable elements make the interface easy to scan. When I squint, I can still see everything.
You'd never consider adding a dark mode to this interface—or at least, I personally can't imagine what one would look like, because the interface is neither light nor dark to begin with. The result is far easier on my eyes.
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
I understand and sympathize with the philosophy behind flat design -- that it intentionally puts the interface in the background (low contrast, less variation), so whatever content you're consuming (photos, videos, book text) is the focus.
But I also sympathize with your point -- that when you want to use the interface to do stuff rather than merely scroll through content, it's simply harder now.
[+] [-] CharlesW|6 years ago|reply
However, research shows that dark-on-light (positive polarity) displays are better for most people most of the time, with some exceptions.
For those who want to go deeper, several studies and papers are cited in the article The Dark Side of Dark Mode: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/
[+] [-] kleer001|6 years ago|reply
Does anyone else have this?
Is it brain cancer?!
edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer.
Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.
[+] [-] sprayk|6 years ago|reply
Similarly, this is why your eyes can hurt while reading in dimmer settings. It's not because low light itself is somehow harmful while reading, but because your eyes have a harder time staying focused as you naturally move while reading.
edit: I adopted light themes everywhere after reading this, probably https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268 . Knowing depth of field from photography helped this make sense, as well as understanding (from conversations with a doctor in my family) that the generic feeling "strain" is most likely associated with muscle activity than anything else.
[+] [-] jrockway|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slazaro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benji_is_me|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pks016|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpcan|6 years ago|reply
It was easy for me many years ago. I looked at command lines all day and no problem.
Now I see blurry lines for 10 minutes all around me if I have to spend any length of time in a command line interface, or look at an article in dark mode.
This is, unfortunately, an accessibility issue, not a design issue.
[+] [-] robotron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
It's perfectly reasonable to use dark-on-light in a terminal emulator; Apple's one defaults to it, for instance.
[+] [-] ThrowawayR2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fanf2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NauticalStu|6 years ago|reply
I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer.
I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal.
My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha.
https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visua...
[+] [-] bobbylarrybobby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroxx1986|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
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 lenses, including in your eyes -- that white "pollutes" black but not vice-versa.
Thus with black-on-white text, letterforms stay separate, clear, and legible. Any light spreading simply makes the letterforms appear, say, at 10% brightness instead of 0% brightness. Zero problems with legibility, still plenty of contrast.
But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. Now granted, if you're 15 years old with perfect vision, it may not be particularly noticeable or objectionable. But the older you get or worse eyesight you have, the more it becomes a big problem.
So dark mode is nice to have, but for most apps going dark-only is objectively bad for accessibility, and legibility generally.
[+] [-] Izkata|6 years ago|reply
I, uh, don't see a halo. Never have. I see streaks/starbursts, kinda like this quora post [0], except I've seen streetlights like that my whole life (so I don't think it's an eye problem like they suggest). Maybe that influences why I find dark mode easier on the eyes? No blurring, but it's also not sharp enough to cause the starburst.
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-ligh...
[+] [-] inciampati|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saltcured|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jeromenerf|6 years ago|reply
White on dark with fuzzy fonts on non hidpi screens is terrible indeed.
[+] [-] dustyfence|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shank|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Razengan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unglaublich|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fhennig|6 years ago|reply
Also reducing the backlight saves battery.
But I still think that a little bit more low-contrast would be nice.
[+] [-] ilikehurdles|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomatsu|6 years ago|reply
There's no need to stare at cold blue light all day long.
Fun fact, there is actually a CSS media query for selecting dark/light themes:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
[+] [-] petercooper|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwern|6 years ago|reply
If it is really impossible to support more than one theme in the long run, this seems like a perfect use-case for an A/B test: randomize half your users into dark-mode and half into light-mode, and track total attrition and activity over the next few months (and not some proxy variable, switching to dark mode is too important to use some unreliable intermediate measurement).
[+] [-] peterfisher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oblib|6 years ago|reply
I don't like it at all. Makes me wonder if it's because I'm getting old and my vision isn't aa sharp as it used to be.
My main monitor has a "low blue light" setting that I do like though. It took me a bit to get used to it but I can really feel the difference if I turn it off now. I've since adjusted my two peripheral monitors to lower the blue light settings and that's helped reduce eye strain a lot for me.