It's only over if you contractually agree to only ever read anything on paper with a flashlight held directly behind the pages shining light through the paper right into your face.
You are a funny person. So the discomfort I get from the light a screen emits when the screen is predominantly white is not there because the wire wrote that dark mode doesn't make you blink more often?
And your argument about paper being white is suddenly fitting because people who enable dark mode and like it better never did that because of light even if that is what they say they did it for.
But hey, if you want to get irrationally angry because some people use a button you don't like to use on their computer, you do you I guess...
No one in this discussion claimed that any mode was objectively better, they just told you why people use dark mode. If you portrait yourself here like you did in the support thing you are so bitter about, the reason you didn't get any help was not your screen color setting, just saying.
I don't know why you seem to really need light mode.to be objectively better, but this topic no one gives a flying f about seems to be really important to you. What a weird hill to die on. For the record: I don't care who uses what stinking color mode. It's literally one click so treating that shit as some sort of fundamental decision is bullshit either way. I (and everybody else here) just.told you why we use that mode. That's all.
I only chimed in because your paper argument was blatantly missing the point and you acted all arrogant about it nonetheless.
Final remark: your "articles" are op-eds without any citation or data so they qualify as "anecdotal" at best. So if you want to lead this discussion with empirical evidence, why don't you go first, eh?
I never said it was better. I said I got ridiculed and told I was wrong for choosing it. As I have been here.
My point is that there’s factual science that suggests it’s not really better for you in any way (which was frequently offered as a reason to support using it), as well as the fact that human beings have been reading black text on light backgrounds for centuries. It has nothing to do with light emitting nonsense. It has to do with adaptation.
It’s what we are used to. Period.
I honestly don’t care one way or another- but this discussion absolutely proves my original point. People need to lighten up.
Ok I actually read the article and was not satisfied with what I saw. The zapier and wired article links to some hella outdated literature (screens have improved a lot from 1998 and 2003 screens).
In the articles you also linked, they also said blue light has more of an effect on eye strain. Age may also be a factor (no shame in getting old). Here's an obligatory article presenting a case on the usage of dark mode. Honestly, it's a not too well researchedtopic. There's research for and against the use of dark mode.
It all comes down to personal preferance. You can't just go up to a person and say "Hey fuckwit, your theming is wrong". That's universally considered rude. Though if you want to reduce eye strain, it all comes down to blue light level. You can also use e-ink screens however, screen latency is still an issue there.
I just wanted to put articles that conflict with your links. People might see it and say "Ohhhhh I'm gonna switch to light mode because this guy has shiny blue links". Reader, please, do as you please. Also, don't reply to this.
So blink more and you will be fine lmao one of the articles even says there is very little to no scientific work done in blue light emissions and I’d bet there is about the same amount done for dark mode too
I can’t disprove any findings that the article never claims. I just read through all three of those. That was the biggest waste of time I did today.
Nothing in those articles stated any evidence or facts(article 2 doesn’t even talk about dark mode past the first paragraph btw, it transitions into blue light and calling it dark mode). Nothing was peer-reviewed. None of them even took a side.
That being said, I decided to do some research of my own on the college portal, it doesn’t seem like there is much actual research on the matter period. The closest thing I could find is a study indicating that usage of dark mode can cause you to be more honest, which i have saved to read later because that sounds interesting.
What I do know is, I could barely read article 1 and 3 due to the text on the screen. I actually have a headache from the strain of the black text on white background. I really don’t understand how people can do that. Like sure white text on black screen can be a pain at times as well but, at least it doesn’t give me a headache. It’s not like dark mode implementations are white on black, most of them are a white on grey or a grey on black to allow for a lesser adjustment, it’s OLED themes that do pitch black with white text. I can do dark theme any day, my eyes hurt with OLED themes
Cool anecdotal story. That certainly disproves everything I have said so far. That must mean that there’s no possible way OTHER people can prefer it the other way.
If we’re talking adaptation, then ‘centuries’ is fairly irrelevant given how long our generations are…
Also, hasn’t it really only been a small number of centuries where reading has become a regular and critical function for the majority of the population?
Combine that with the fact that it’s long been easier/cheaper to make a uniformly light-coloured ‘paper’ and dark ink, than the reverse.
Using our history of dark-text might just be allowing the technology of the times to drive the future.
A more interesting comparison might be that we started with dark displays and light text (amber and green-screens) and moved to white displays with dark text later on.
Was that change due to a desire to mimic the paper medium?
Was it down to the quality of displays at the time (light bleed on CRTs might have driven this flip from dark to light once uniformity and brightness reached useful levels)?
Or was it because more people prefer dark text over light?
Regardless I’d like to finish by virtually girding my loins, brandishing my digital spear, and warning everyone that they’ll have to pry dark-mode from my cold-dead hands.
Paper doesn't emit light. It's not even similar, let alone the same thing.
I use an ereader with black on white, but the lack of an option to use dark mode on a screen guarantees I never consider touch your app again. It's eye cancer.
It's literally 100% exclusively about where the light is coming from.
Combined, those articles link to one actual bit of research where they tested in a dark room with participants 6 fucking feet away from a 24 inch dim screen. That's not even sort of representative of the real world.
But... all of those have to do with light (and are mostly clickbaity articles that do admit in the body of the thing that dark mode does reduce eye strain, limit battery drain on most handheld devices and lower the impact of blue light). When your big argument against dark mode is "well, it's less eye-searingly uncomfortably, so it may induce you to use an application too much" I think us dark mode defenders can rest our case.
Nah, you can absolutely just... prefer light mode. Besides this being the "unpopular opinion" magazine (which is to say, we're all here to be called out on our unpopular hills to die on, it's part of the fun), the colors you use for your websites are up to you. The only objective thing that matters here is that having a toggle available is better than not having a toggle and being locked to one or the other.
Buuuut, it's also true that the articles you're referencing are pretty bad and don't quite say what you seem to say they say. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not annoyed at you for that. I'm mostly annoyed at the way media misreports scientific studies, honestly.
I remember reading a while ago that there are people who stand up before wiping, and people who wipe before they stand up, and neither camp can fathom how the other does it. This is giving me that same energy.
This is in fact an unpopular opinion. You heathen.
Joking aside, when I was first learning HTML my teacher always hated when students inverted the colors to make a “darkmode” because she said it gave people headaches. So I guess it’s a thing.
Depending on how old you are, your vision also naturally dims as you age. This is also why stuff designed by older people is often blindingly bright to young people and vice versa. I’m willing to bet that if a survey was done it would show that the popularity of darkmode drops sharply as users age.
I might be older than you and I’ve been using dark mode since it first became available on Android. If I make it to a hundred I’ll still be rockin’ dark mode.
I like day mode in sunlight and dark mode in low light or if I'm reading in bed with the lights off. Definitely depends on the type of screen you have. The Samsung Tab S8 isn't even OLED but it's bright even with the settings turned right down so reading black on a blinding white screen is uncomfortable in the dark
It’s not just the tab s8, I have a tab s7 and it’s super bright and obnoxiously loud even at the lowest settings. I don’t understand why there is not more control over it.
Dark mode can be harder on the eyes and/or give headaches to people with astigmatism. It has to do with halation. White text on a black background is blurrier than black text on a white background. There’s a nice accessibility description here. I personally dislike dark mode for that very reason.
fully agree, I dislike light mode but the true black dark modes hurt just the same after extended periods, grey mode somewhat like how discord has it hopefully turns into standard for dark mode styles instead of OLED style dark modes
This is true af. I have an astigmatism in both eyes but I still prefer darkmode. Mainly because of the look, but at night light mode is way worse than the blurry text (which is solved by increasing the font size)
I can’t stand dark mode. A lot of things that were high contrast in light mode become illegible to me. Like dark blue text on a black background. Dark blue also tends to be the default color for keywords in most programming languages.
For the longest time it was light mode only everywhere, and I wouldn’t wish the same suffering on anyone. Including both should really just be standard design practice
First of all, it probably depends on the type of screen. Secondly, it might be because 9f the brightness settings. Thirdly, the most used apps by the person. Some apps are better in light mode and vice versa. Fourthly, it depends on the way the person’s eyes are sensitive. For some, like me, white text bleeds into dark backgrounds and that makes it harder to read, but the dark mode feel and comfort make it much less straining in the end. Another reason could be the perceived sense of elegance which is just subjective with no explanation.
I legitimately cannot read dark mode. Like the text just blends into the page. People who bully light mode users are bullying people for using an accessibility feature :(
Let people use the UI that lets them read. Like I cannot send a screenshot on discord without 5 people harassing me.
Side note, this makes it really sad when apps neglect a light mode, like steam or discord. Steam just doesn’t have one and discord’s has weird colour contrast, I can’t explain why but it feels like an inverted colour interface and not traditional light mode like say Mastodon
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