Light Mode InFFFFFFlation

> My eyes will thank you

Sometimes I think the most hate for light mode is from people without autobrightness in their displays. Or from those who don’t know how to change it easily.

Sure, if I were to constantly blind myself with 10k lux, I would hate white background too.

But it isn’t supposed to be like that: make it the same brightness as the surroundings and voila.

I’ve never met a person saying they hate books and wish they were white on black.

Also with glossy display (like 6k xdr) the only way I can deal with reflections is by always using light mode. Alabaster code theme is my favorite.

If you don’t have auto brightness, there are many apps to change it easily via UI or keyboard instead of manual knobs of your monitor — most of them for the past 10 years support control via hdmi/displayport

—

I don’t see people complaining “I hate listening to most music because my headphones are always at 90% volume — every soundtrack should be lounge cafe del mar.” Or “I use this browser extension to make everything 5% loud.”

Well, just turn down the volume knob, dummy.

I’m not a big fan of dark mode and I seem to be in the minority these days. Probably 99% of my colleagues at work use dark mode and when I screen share I get the usual “ah, my eyes!”

The interesting thing is, I’ve noticed when I read white on black and look elsewhere I see horizontal lines in my vision. So really I’m the one who should be shouting about their eyes. Maybe that’s just me, though?

I guess I want my computing experience to be like that of reading a book. Not sure I’d like white text on black paper.

I have stared at a light mode screen for 16 hours a day for 20 years without even the hint of discomfort. 5 minutes of dark mode and my eyes feel someone is shining lasers at me.

I have concluded that light mode is for light mode people and dark mode is for dark mode people. Making light mode a little darker or dark mode a little lighter isn’t going to change how people experience interfaces. Make light mode for light people and dark mode for dark mode people.

Maybe things are getting brighter, but it hasn’t been noticeable to me.

> Back in the day, light mode wasn’t called “light mode”. It was just the way that computers were…

Things people born after Macintosh say.

"Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes" (2020), 300 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33947820

For me there’s something about context that shapes my dark mode vs light mode preference. Code and terminals is dark, documents/web/chat is light. For some reason I can’t stand dark mode slack/discord, but dark mode IDE is preferred.

Also, there’s just something about the graph of “Average brightness of MacOS screenshots over the years” and extrapolating it that tickles my brain. By 2030 MacOS light mode will just be a single white rectangle (with a notch). It reminds me of the “Number of youtube videos on the homepage” blog that extrapolates that by 2030 there will be 0 videos on the homepage.

I think the introduction of the "light mode" "dark mode" distinction actually made things worse.

As a designer, before you had the whole spectrum to work with so you could have dark areas in light areas in dark areas, etc.

Now, if you start with thinking "I'm working on a light-mode theme" you're suddenly restricted to only half the gamut for backgrounds, and you end up spreading things out more within that (more white, in order to contrast the slightly darker white). Plus you need to make it visually distinct from "dark mode" which means you're probably aiming for less than 50% gamut.

I think it's a mental trap.

Edit: And it's made worse by the fact that browsers now have built in light/dark mode preferences, standardizing this framing. So if you create something that doesn't fit in the light/dark boxes, you worry about users complaining of you not respecting their browser preferences.

My personal choice is kinda split between both modes. I like Light as a default, but prefer Dark for others. For instance, the IDE where I write code is always in the darker mode, but writing normal notes/prose, such as in Obsidian, Apple Notes, is always light. I also prefer the non-primary focus area to be of a darker shade; hence, the sidebar in my Obsidian is usually darker with light text while the main writing area is light (themes/settings does this).

However, I prefer Dark Mode on my phone as the default, except for a few specific apps, such as Maps, even at night. I like minimal setup with less text and content during daytime but after sunset, the phone is set to be more pronounced (with labels, etc). I’m 40+ and I like sharper text and higher contrast especially when it is darker (night). Hence, the more pronounced Phone Setup; I should be able to read/know quick enough if I get a Whitelisted call at Night.

I like apps that do not force but give me an option to have a choice between Light/Dark.

In macOS, to use Dark Theme for Menubar and Dock (the periphery) but overall Light Theme for the main content, here is how to do it;

1. Go to System Preferences, then set the theme to LIGHT.

2. In Terminal, run `defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool Yes`

3. Logout, then System Preferences, then set the theme to DARK

If you wish to reset back to the default, in Terminal, run `defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool No`

I also feel like there's fewer websites with prominent color schemes/colored backgrounds. I wonder if sites are sticking to light/dark backgrounds more specifically so they can support modern CSS features like `@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark)`

I wonder how much brighter (nits) screens have become over the same period as well.

Personally I like dark mode because most of the time my screen isn't looking at things that are majority pure white, it's looking at games, or videos, or blogs with a background color, or whatever. If I adjust my brightness to see relatively dark things comfortably, then things in light mode are now too bright. But since I look at more things that aren't pure white than pure white I adjust for the more common use case. The increase in blank space in UIs and the trend towards less color and differentiation have made the number of things where light mode is unbearable too high.

Good. I want FFFFFF and 000000, not any light and dark grays which are just annoying to read. Especially with my OLED monitor, it's amazing to see pure blacks and vivid whites, so much so that I use the Dark Reader extension everywhere and when that doesn't cut it, I use custom stylesheets for certain websites to make the `body { background: black; }`.

By trying to outsmart your monitor brightness setting and micromanaging it yourself per-app you're killing the consistency. This should be used for relative color schemes in your app, not for micromanaging the brightness.

Neutral grey makes sense in two cases:

- Relative color schemes in which your elements can be either lighter or darker than the background.

- Precise color grading, because white and black backgrounds shift color perception too much.

If you feel the background is too bright, either add more light in the room, or reduce the monitor brightness. It's all relative, it physically cannot have too much absolute brightness to hurt your eyes. The daylight is orders of magnitude stronger but you have no problem with it because your eyes adapt. What hurts them is excessive contrast: staring at the monitor in the dark room, pure black color schemes on OLED screens, etc. This looks jarring and breaks eye adaptation.

I use mixed mode: editor and terminal on black background (and US keymap) everything else on white background (and my country keymap.)

There is no particular reason for that except habits. I started programming on black background terminals and the first anything else happened on Unix workstations or Windows PCs with white backgrounds.

I adjust the overall brightness of my screen according to the light level of the room and I use night mode. When I happen to use some other computer in dark mode it's usually too dark: white characters are often too thin and don't enjoy enough light to be readable. Maybe dark mode is for young eyes or for people that are very sensitive to glare.

> Somewhat in the spirit of Mavericks Forever, if I were to pick an old MacOS design to go back to it would probably be Yosemite. I don’t have any nostalgia for skeuomorphic brushed metal or stitched leather, but I do quite like the flattened design and blur effects that Yosemite brought. Ironically Yosemite was a substantial jump in brightness from previous versions.

Author of Mavericks Forever here. I find it very surprising that the author complains about low contrast and then praises Yosemite.

Yosemite is absolutely what started this trend, and the lack of contrast is why I hate it. This may not show up in the window chrome specifically, but the broader UI has way less contrast than Aqua.

This actually got slightly better in 10.11 (El Capitan) before getting worse again. 10.9 and older are of course the best.

Mavericks also has little brushed metal and zero stitched leather. The author is thinking of (Mountain) Lion, and of early iOS, which is much more skeuomorphic.

P.S. Fine, you win, I just pushed an update to kill the animations.

I was never a fan of the "Dark Mode"/"Light Mode" trend. "We've added support to our website/application for a whole TWO themes!"

Meanwhile:

- One of the two themes is always worse, but which one it is is different from application to application

- Despite the above, I'm required to decide globally whether I'm a "dark mode" or "light mode" person, with no option to just let the application or website decide on its own which theme is best.

- Because designers now need to support inverted contrast everywhere, everything has to be monochrome, including icons, text, backgrounds, etc.

I'd honestly rather people just picked one theme and directed their efforts towards making it look as good as possible. Or, you know, add support for real custom theming so I can make it look however I want.

The root cause may just be the increase in dead space caused by mobile first UIs.

This has some questionable methodology.

    image = Image.open(file)
    greyscale =  image.convert('L')
    stat = ImageStat.Stat(greyscale)
    avg_lightness = int(stat.mean[0])

But also:

> What I’ve graphed here is just the brightness of the window chrome, which isn’t really representative of the actual total screen brightness.

No kidding. Also, Mac OS keeps changing the chrome, and this isn’t obviously a very useful measurement.

There is something in the air regarding dark mode, lots of people are starting to admit dark mode UI are often harder to read, harder to build, or not worth the effort. Maybe we are past peak dark-mode

I’ve noticed this tendency in my own UI work as well: dark designs tend to get darker, and light designs lighter, when updated or refreshed in isolation. Is there a term for this kind of ratcheting effect?

I miss the Apple IIe with its pure orange cathode rays on the pitch black of zero light emission, gently lazing my eyeballs each day as I clacked BASIC into the REPL.

I think that pure white (255) and pure black (0) should be using extremely sparingly. #FFFFFF? Why not #f6f6ef or #eceff4? Lower contrast can improve legibility, too much contrast can hinder it. #000000? Why not #121821, a dark shade of blue? Nothing in real life is perfectly dark.

Thankfully HN has remained pleasingly off-white.

Comments here lambasting too bright background/letters..

QuickBasic/QBasic/edit.com(and turbo pascal?) darkish blue background and grey text was just damn comfortable and why we turned our backs on it is beyond me.

This isn’t even good design Apple used to known for anymore, making everything glassy and sacrificing the user health is simply asinine. Computers are not meant to be decorations that sit on a shelf, but interacted with all day, and the fact that we’re missing that aspect speaks volumes.

In real terms dark modes have gotten darker too, at least on mobile, due to the proliferation of OLEDs with infinite contrast. #000000 went from "the darkest grey the display can manage" to "no light whatsoever".

My hypothesis is that this has to do with the whitening of the UI.

Personally I love Windows XP because it's so colorful. The taskbar is blue. The start button is green. The window frame is blue, the close button is red. The sidebars are tinted yellow. Even icons like CD-roms aren't greyscale, but tinted purple instead.

Since then, people started removing color from everything. Colorful icons became monochrome, perhaps only so it could be easily switched from "light mode" to "dark mode" by switching their colors from black to white and vice-versa. Everything is now harder to see.

On Linux, most attempts to mimic retro GUIs fail because they can't tint different parts internal of a window of different colors, such as tinting only the sidebar a shade of yellow. This is rather ironic given that GTK's CSS theoretically could allow this. But in practice there is no stable public "API" for the classses used inside an application to allow users to re-style them easily with CSS. Even if I could do .sidebar { color: #ff0; }, I don't know the class name that my file manager used for its sidebar, for example, so I can't really do that.

In my opinion this the main reason modern UI's feel so bland and lifeless.

Light mode decreases the localised dynamic range. Also, screens are way brighter than they used to be. It’s the visual equivalent of the loudness wars in broadcast audio. Is everything is loud/bright then nothing is, but everything is still more exhausting.

I suspect the trend would be even more extreme if multiplied by typical screen brightness over time!

Discord did something similar. Their light mode used to be a lot more reasonable, with the sidebar still grey, then they decided to make it "actually light" because someone complained about it on Twitter. Now it's blindingly white.

The white-fest also makes Liquid Glass on macOS basically flat mode with extra steps. Because all the fancy glass refraction effects don't actually do anything if you put them on a solid block of color.

Interfaces used to be “battle ship grey” which I loved.

That's adorable. You think light mode is getting too light? Just wait until people figure out the eyeball-searing power of HDR gamut annotations. OLED devices usually keep plenty of nits in reserve in normal operation. Pop in some HDR content and you get the device to pump more photons into the user's eyeball.

Dark mode simply makes sense. Black pixels == no light == no photoreceptor stimulation == the default state. The fact that we used to blast our eyes with near-fully lit displays is a historical artifact of the early days of graphical computer interfaces. I find it annoying (and potentially medically dangerous to some people) that certain actions result in a short white flash while the content is rendered. Mostly happens in web-related apps.

Light mode is masochism mode, with just a few exceptions: e-ink, highly lit environments (that are uncomfortable to work in anyways), people with vision problems that tolerate light-themed UIs better, and weirdos who enjoy staring at a flashlight. If you're gonna use that, might as well just turn down the screen brightness - but I agree with the author that perhaps a middle ground "gray theme" would be better, if slightly less attractive to UI designers.