Dark Mode Sucks
keenen.xyzI disagree overall. I find it much less painful on the eyes to read in dark mode at night, even if there's no evidence for health benefits.
I agree that dark mode as an additional UI shouldn't be an afterthought, and should be tested fully just like the main UI. Poorly-designed dark mode can be difficult to use because of things like bad contrast.
I think the point is that, after everything is said and done, there's no evidence that supports dark mode. Personal anecdote goes both ways.
Dark mode usually has lower contrast ratio (gray-on-gray text instead of black-on-white), and that's definitely proven to be harder to read.
The beyond-frustrating thing for me is that Windows 3.1 supported dark mode via system color palettes along with any other color customization anyone wanted to make to their entire system in a single place. Now every single application is custom-drawn and custom-themed, so these sorts of customizations are impossible.
This all worked better literally 30 years ago.
In my mind, it's not about medical evidence for dark mode: I just prefer the experience as a user.
Also even light mode is often gray on gray, with backgrounds like #eee and text like #112 for example. The contrast is probably lower on average for dark mode, but it can still be designed well.
gray-on-gray? of course that's shitty. There's white on black tho, which I use in all apps that have it (most do). Most commonly called AMOLED black.
> I find it much less painful on the eyes to read in dark mode at night
I don't understand this. Do people not use lamp or light source in their house? Are people living like cavemen? Otherwise, how is it that much difference between day and night+lamp?
If it is sleep time, there is already blue light filter most OS supports nowadays. No need to ask each app to support a separate color scheme.
Easy, a proper screen puts out north of 500-600 nits also on phones. Also people's eyes have variable sensitivity to light, nothing weird about that.
Besides, you don't stare straight at your lamps. You do stare straight at your screen. The "night mode" just kills all color on your devices. It's a lot worse option than dark mode.
Last time I calibrated my monitor for sRGB, the first step DisplayCAL ask me to do is to aim for 120 nits brightness. Sure a screen is capable of outputting 500 nits, doesn't mean you have to use its full capacity. Unless you guys are writing code or reading book under HDR mode all the time?
Fyi that 120 nits recommendation is probably because most color grading assumes you work in a dark-ish room. It's probably not a good value for office work.
Proper gaming screens like Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has a base brightness of ~600 nits and peak brightness of 2000. Iphone 14 pro's can also get pretty bright (1000-2000 nits). Also these gaming screens perform best in HDR mode even in regular desktop use as the dynamic 2048 zone backlight works properly there. The more dynamic range your screen has, the better everything looks. Your calibrated 120 nits is _very_ dark, and likely the overall dynamic range of your screen isn't very high either and the maximum brightness is 350-400 nits at most and contrast is absolute rubbish.
One of my sons has migraines with accompanying light sensitivity. Yes, some days he lives in the dark, with dark mode screens turned way down.
I remember a time when usability people took pride in the high amount of work they put into what were often pretty damn great user experiences.
My takeaway from this post is very different. Minimum work, or even modest work, and the users should be so lucky they get to even use the thing.
The trend is already to dumb things down with flat design, tons of stuff not all that discoverable, and on and on I could go.
Perhaps usability has peaked, and now posts like this are the rule of the day?
Sure hope not, but I do harbor doubts.
Put the work in. It's the users who make your efforts go. Nobody else does.
I agree with you about the importance of great user experiences and there should be no limit on how much work is put into that. My post was more about dark mode being seen as a necessity for a great user experience. There's little evidence for its benefits and the time spent implementing and maintaining it could be spent on improving all the other issues you mention.
The evidence is clear in that very large numbers of users prefer it and can articulate why.
That you personally do not agree is a separate matter.
As you age, and I am guessing you are in your first few decades of life, remember this moment when you find yourself preferring dark mode and more able to articulate it yourself.
> Perhaps usability has peaked, and now posts like this are the rule of the day?
Probably, but the change can't stop. Must keep on innovating with useless side-grades or even downgrades.
You will prove right over the next handful of years, maybe as much as a decade.
Wish it were different.
I miss supremely crafted interfaces. Pro users can move as if thought itself is action. Sure glad I got to experience a handful of them, each a mini career piece of software.
I know the author says the article is tongue in cheek but honestly, what's he smoking?
Forget about physiologically measurable eyestrain for a second. NOT staring at a super bright white light is more comfortable and less jarring in many (arguably nearly all) use cases. Anecdotal for sure, but across friends and family that span dozens of demographics I've never shown dark mode to someone where they then had a bad reaction - all of them found it interesting, if not downright soothing compared to dark mode, and most of them continued using it in the future and even trying to find dark mode on other sites they use.
Less subjectively, it really isn't hard to make a dark mode interface and complaining about having to do so is wild. Skill issue.
>super bright white light
Simply going outside should be brighter than your monitor. We're pretty much evolved to hunt (and thus see best) during the daytime. I'm convinced a lot of the reasons people hate light themes is because their monitors and/or color temperature are too bright compared to ambient light.
I completely disagree. I personally find dark mode harmful to my eyes. Try this: open a page full of white text on black background. Stare at it for 10 seconds. Now close your eyes. You can clearly see the afterimages of those bright text lingering for quite a while. Now try this with black on white page. No afterimage at all.
Like the author says, if the screen is too bright for you, lower the brightness, or use night light mode. You can change your environment. You can't change how your eyes/brain function.
No, with black text on white background I get an afterimage of the entire screen.
I don't want to force you to use dark mode, by all means continue viewing your world with dark text on bright backgrounds and let us view things the way that we prefer them.
Yeah, it's the long form of "just kidding"
And often followed by sorry, (not sorry)
I think that in many cases a program should not need to specify its own colours, and can use the user's colours settings in the operating system. Having "light mode" and "dark mode" is mostly unnecessary (this should also be true for web pages that do not have CSS; the user's default colours can be used), if you can just customize the colours fully, instead (although presets may be available for users who do not wish to customize the colours).
However, one case where it might help is that a program does need to specify some of its own colours, in addition to the standard ones (unless the program already allows customizing its colours; some programs will already do this, which might be helpful anyways, in case of e.g. colour blindness, or a monochrome display, etc). In this case, dark mode might be helpful for the program to know which colours it should use for its additional colours.
If you want to be able to automatically set the colours by time of day or by other criteria (e.g. which display it is connected to, or whether or not the output will be diverted to a printer), then a separate program could be used, to configure the system by such things.
Dark mode, especially on an OLED screen is vastly superior IMHO.
Indeed! Gorgeous!
I think this troll post is designed to just draw traffic to his site.
If you have a HDR capable screen that even in 'normal' circumstances hovers at a base brigthness of about 500-600 nits, Dark Mode is an absolute necessity.
Besides, it makes actual content on screen just pop so much more when it's not fighting with the sun that is your white background.
Also it prolongs the life of fragile oled screens further as the subpixels don't require as much energy to shine.
I agree with him 100%. It hurts my eyes. It's extremely frustrating that most sites still don't let you toggle between them. It's also frustrating that Chrome and Firefox don't have a button you can click that changes prefers-color-scheme. They're already picking up the value from the OS. Why not let us change it?
And before somebody asks, my OS is set to dark mode because the light mode UI is unusable.
I can't wait for the fad to pass.
In Firefox, go to Hamburger menu -> Settings -> General -> Language and appearance. There is a big three-button setup with Automatic/Light/Dark options (where Automatic is your OS-wide choice).
Go for it. Turn it on light mode and use it for a while. Let me know what you think of the UI design.
This is a terrible take. "Just lowering the brightness" also lowers contrast, which makes text harder to read (among other things). Dark mode allows you to keep that contrast without keeping the perceived brightness, which is a big win.
Whenever I accidentally visit a light mode site I get an immediate small but annoying stabbing pain that feels like it comes from behind my eyeballs. This is empirical evidence that light mode is harmful to me at least for that small moment when switching. Apparently the author thinks that growing up will fix this... but I'm unconvinced that's going to happen.
I use darkreader a lot, but for some sites it's not so good. If a site has a decent dark mode, or takes a lot of config to get working, I'll disable darkreader for the site.
Anyway, low effort opinion article.
> Apparently the author thinks that growing up will fix this... but I'm unconvinced that's going to happen.
Coming up to 44 and not there yet. At what age do you reckon it kicks in?
Every time I visit HN it feels like I'm getting flashbanged
I'll just curse the author to having to read everything from now on in green text on cherry red background, and then just tell him to turn the monitor down or desaturate if they don't like it. :D
I think the problem isn't dark mode itself, but as the author states "native dark mode support". If your app is designed in white-mode, it's important to know how it is going to look in dark mode, and native support somewhat limits your control over that. This is particularly egregious in email.
This is less of a problem in apps and the web, but in email it is absolutely horrendous. But then again, the entire email styling thing is still in the dark ages.
Yes exactly! And native support creates an expectation that every website and app will in turn support dark mode, when some don't or there are glitches it negatively impacts the overall experience.
And you're completely right about email. Seems like many email clients force email content into dark mode, even images and it's such a pain to handle.
>For very little rewards, we've doubled the work required for interfaces.
What, how is it doubling required work? There is so much to do when it comes to interface design than just colors. With a proper logic behind coloring, and a token system, its not that big of a deal. Many people prefer dark mode.
Also, changing brightness on an external screen twice a day would be quite tedious... imagine with multiple screens.
Build an interface with selectable color themes in both light and dark mode. Not trivial. You have to come up with generalized keys and a style guideline that's followed by everyone everywhere or the user changes theme and suddenly can't see a panel on that one screen buried somewhere.
Themeing is hard. And he is rightly bitching about all the apps that slap on dark mode at the end and leave all kinds of visual bugs in place.
Nothing about UI/UX work, no matter what platform or framework, is trivial. It takes a gruelling amount of work and time, that's why most modern UIs suck hard. People don't have the time, money or skills to do it.
Small nit, some fonts need to be thicker in dark mode, and some images may not play well (eg. SVGs of black lines on transparent backgrounds).
But agreed, it's nowhere near double the work.
GNOME's had a software-controlled brightness that can change automatically based on time of day, for years now.
> For very little rewards, we've doubled the work required for interfaces.
It is not dark mode that was added, but the light one. Dark mode is OG.
I'm all in on dark mode. All my devices are dark. I find it far easier on my eyes. And out of frustration that most sites don't have the option, I've enabled Chrome's auto dark mode[0], though this still breaks a few things (worth the cost to me).
[0] chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark
I disagree. Dark mode is necessary at night. Having the app detects sunlight/sundown and adjust appropriately is the best.
All it takes is for someone to be forced to work at night one time to appreciate dark mode (e.g. being on-call).
My devices have "night light" which changes the color temperature according to sunlight, rather than inverting colors.
I believe Dark Mode is beneficial in certain situations. For a privacy enhancement or to reduce distractions. To evoke a retro or gaming aesthetic.
A long time ago, I fell in love with "paper white" type color schemes, as they were known, and it just felt like a more pleasant experience than the CRT amber/green terminals. Now I'm more adaptable; I don't mind when Battery Saver mode kicks in.
"night light" just makes everything yellow and looks like trash. dark mode is the superior alternative.
Not a huge proponent of dark mode, but aside: resent the use of Hackers pic on this post. Dade Murphy was wearing sunglasses in the opening scenes while hacking!! Wasn't just for an elite look!
Haha you're right it was a necessity back in the day. The look was pretty cool though!
I don't think I've ever disagreed with a post so strongly.
Sorry it's more work for designers, but honestly I don't actually care. It's a nice option for users.
I have very distracting floaters in my eyes and dark mode does a great job of hiding them.
> Is your screen too bright at night? Just turn your brightness down
It just doesn't work like that, even the lowest setting can be a blast to the eyes if the background is pure white. I have grown especially fond of dark mode due to getting woken up in the middle of the night due to on-call for work. A low brightness setting either makes things too hard to read or is still overly bright.
This guy should really lighten up a bit.
Uhhh, his site is dark mode? Lol
author is teen/twenty-something? CHECK
He turned 30 this year.