I primarily use dark mode when I am in the dark or in a dimly lit room.
Having any light blasted right into my eyes hurts. And ruins my night vision. And also messes with my sleep.
Aaaand use f.lux (https://justgetflux.com/). Daylight setting black on white may indeed be way too bright at night, but when you turn down amount of light produced - or let through to your eyes - by your monitor and combine it with the night adjustments from f.lux in my experience you are good even reading late.
Of course, in addition I also only use some pretty dim LEDs from some x-mas decorations instead of the bright lamps everybody else seems to use when I walk around the neighborhood at night. I could not live with using those regular lamps any more. I've gotten used to having my rooms pretty dark whenever it's dark outside, light equivalent to maybe half a dozen candles.
Both the ambient light and the monitor have to be adjusted. They can use dark mode all they want, if they leave a regular lamp on it still is very bright.
Living like this I noticed how little light I actually need, by now I deliberately keep older - significantly dimmer than new - of those x-mas LED chains ("warm white" - more yellow by now), use the newer (still brighter) ones early in the evening, and later switch to the old even dimmer ones exclusively. And it still is more than enough, maybe three or four candles equivalent per room.
> > I primarily use dark mode when I am in the dark or in a dimly lit room. Having any light blasted right into my eyes hurts. And ruins my night vision. And also messes with my sleep.
> It’s almost like too tongue in cheek that you write exactly like the techbros the article talks about. Did you even try to read the article?
> [...]
> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.
I did, and I think this kind of reasoning is not wise or meaningfully scientific. Experiencing physical pain in the response to something when you see it is way more immediate and way more relevant to one's own decisions regarding that stimulus than some study about average effects across a population of people who have different eyes than you in a situation that you can only hope is sufficiently analogous to your actual usage. (Note that GP writes only about their own experience— their comment does not contain a general argument.)
The article in the OP mentions that things may be different for people with various eye conditions. Guess what? Experiencing pain from using light mode is pretty much a defining symptom of such conditions.
> Light sensitivity is a condition in which bright lights hurt your eyes. Another name for this condition is photophobia.
Through genetic testing, my sister has been diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease which is a cause of photophobia. Despite seeing eye doctors (including various specialists) her whole life, and knowing her entire life that bright light is painful for her, it took her decades to get that diagnosis.
According to your reasoning here, self-advocating for her health and accessibility based upon her own experience of her conditions would have been based on unworthy 'anecdotal proclamations' up until a few months ago.
Let's revisit that characterization:
> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.
It's very easy to find studies later than the date of the OP challenging this view on eye strain with respect to dark mode, including ones that consider the effects of blue light filters, e.g., https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9363189/
Why overcommit like that? How does that advance the credibility of any person or honor the science?
Your tone and overconfidence is the only techbro thing going on here.
You really think you've read enough on this or that there's even been enough study of the topic for you to know with any certainty at all how someone else's eyes are working for them? Pure hubris.
All the data you can read doesn't mean a damn thing for Hosteur's personal experience. Neither you nor anyone you have read has studied that person's eyes, you actually have zero basis for telling them what is easier to read or how much strain they feel in their eyes.
The science on this has been going back and forth for at least the better part of two decades now. Nothing here has been proven, as is the case in most actual science. Any single study merely supports or doesn't support some view or hypothesis. It takes forever to confidently say we know how the eye is even working in these situations, let alone offer some broad recommendation for what every person ought to do.
Aside from that, you are misusing the concept of a categorical proof. The studies at hand don't even address the problem as a categorical concept space. There are no symbolic categories here, no functions mapping objects onto semantic spaces. You are stealing a term you don't understand from a field of mathematics you don't understand to shoot down a person you don't understand.
Stop being an ass and at least try to understand people before you try to tell them what their reality is and what they ought to be doing before bed.
This topic does seem to rile up techbros a lot lol. Maybe tied with “mechanical keyboards make me more efficient” said by people who barely type 200 words a day.
Same here. I also switch to light mode when I'm in a very bright environment and it seems to have helped a lot with eye strain since last year. I feel like these studies are being a bit 1-dimensional... but then again, maybe that's my own confirmation bias.
I’d say that’s normal (studies being one-dimensional). The idea being to isolate as many complications as possible to get at the heart of one single matter.
I didn’t read the study itself, but usually the scientists (if they aren’t pushing an agenda) are aware of the limitations of their studies. It’s the people reporting and commenting on those studies that extrapolate unwarranted conclusions and generalizations from them.
Agreed—the article is sort of silly in that it debunks a bunch of bogus claims about dark mode, but then completely overlooks the main legitimate use, which is to limit exposure to artificial light at night. You basically want to get as much light during the day as is safely possible to stay focused and alert (note that this can be counterindicated for people with certain health conditions, like glaucoma), and then limit light exposure as much as possible at night in order to be able to fall asleep and keep your circadian rhythms healthy. More information here, e.g. https://hubermanlab.com/dr-samer-hattar-timing-light-food-ex...
> You basically want to get as much light during the day as is safely possible to stay focused and alert (note that this can be counterindicated for people with certain health conditions, like glaucoma)
Incidentally, for most people, this means that - unless they're spending most of their time outdoors - they're not getting enough light.
This article seems to equate dark mode with white text on black background. I tend to see dark kodes more complex than that, specifically with yellow text on a dark background which is what I tend to prefer. Ive always liked darcula themes for coding because of the variety of contrasts are better for me.
But having a monitor on in the dark, even if I use flux/night vision and even with low brightness physically hurts my eyes compared to just using dark mode on my apps.
Having astigmatism, I definitely feel like text in dark mode is harder to read than dark text on light background.
In regards to eye strain with light mode, what I found important is to match screen brightness to „environmental brightness“ (don’t know the proper term).
As a rule of thumb, when I put a white paper in front of a white screen, the screen shouldn’t illuminate the paper more than the other lights in the room.
> In regards to eye strain with light mode, what I found important is to match screen brightness to „environmental brightness“ (don’t know the proper term).
Oh yes, exactly this. At evening when sun is going down, then I can feel eye strain as I am looking into brighter and brighter monitor. Switching the light on will easily resolve it.
I used to use dark mode every where because it was somewhat accepted that the lesser bright the better.
But then I read a science-based post years ago about why light mode is better for our eyes, especially for people with astigmatism, as our eyes are naturally used to focus on objects on bright scenarios (sunlight).
Switched back to light theme right away, except for coding, because actually syntax highlighting is better with dark background.
Proposes that black on white text stimulates a pattern of expression in visual system that may contribute to myopia:
> Using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in young human subjects, we found that the choroid, the heavily perfused layer behind the retina in the eye, becomes about 16 µm thinner in only one hour when subjects read black text on white background but about 10 µm thicker when they read white text from black background. Studies both in animal models and in humans have shown that thinner choroids are associated with myopia development and thicker choroids with myopia inhibition. Therefore, reading white text from a black screen or tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white background may stimulate myopia.
Doesn't your quoted passage say the opposite? Reading white text on a black screen may inhibit myopia, and black text on white background does the opposite?
sites designed in dark mode generally need to be larger / thicker, since white text on dark background tends to "appear thinner" and disappear into the background. Lots of sites only invert colors but don't account for this weird optical illusion and don't adjust font size/weights/colors.
In my experience, these aren't perfect and symptoms of astigmatism can be aggravated by eye strain, dryness, allergies, poor lighting, etc even with correction.
There are vision defects that are attributed to misshapen lenses/cornea that seem to be common with astigmatism, and it's those defects that flare up under the conditions I listed in the OP.
I don't have conclusive proof, of course, but in my experience it is those symptoms that get exacerbated.
I have astigmatism, and I read without glasses (by holding the device close enough to the eyes). I find black-on-white more readable in general, but red-on-black is equally readable at night.
It's the opposite for me with astigmatism. Black text on white tends to blur or double into a grey blob, white text on black still sometimes does that, but I find it easier to parse in comparison.
I second that. For me it's worse actually during times when I would normally use dark mode (i.e. evening). My 40-something eyes can get tired while having contact lenses and then dark mode is not so much helpful.
When switching to glasses it's actually bit better.
Not to be a sage here, but "every research is an average taken in the past on other people".
What works for the average is likely a good starting point. It is not necessarily the best for you and a given case (almost for sure different from the experimental ones).
Several years ago, after reading about how claims of dark mode being beneficial were usually bullshit, I switched to light mode for everything and just making sure I have lights turned on where I'm at. It's great!
Yes, my eyes don't hurt anymore, my vision has improved, and I sleep better. I won't go back. Reading condescending insults and "reasons" (in dark mode...) that flatly contradict direct experience won't change that.
In this scenario you kinda just have to do what is best for you, and how you work. Don't get me wrong I'm glad to be better informed on this, but its not going to change that I prefer how dark mode looks overall
That's the main reason I greatly prefer dark mode. I'm surprised it's not mentioned more often, since they're quite common as you age. I've had one since around age 35.
I do prefer dark one but I found out man dark themes are just plainly made badly.
Between bad contrast (I'm looking at you Solarized dark) and just picking plainly too dark background most dark themes are just bad. I wonder if that might've skewed results, kinda hard to make objective "best light/dark theme"
The conclusion of this article (dark mode is bad for your eyes) seems to contradict the article that is used as the main source. In the source (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/) , light mode is described as possibly associated with myopia (nearsightedness).
I thought that was obvious and dark mode was a meme about gamers not having sunlight while having their monitors set at maximum brightness so they use dark mode to reduce glare. Like the whole sunlight is burning, quick close the blinds joke.
OLED mode on my phone is definitely a treat for battery life, but then darker actually means less light instead of dark coloured light.
If room is totally dark, there is no brightness level that is comfortable in light mode, due to high contrast with ambient. It here is simply too much area lit up.
Nitpick - both OLED and regular LED monitors emit less light when the screen is dark/black. The LED monitor is doing it less efficiently (because the LCD screen is blocking the backlight), but it's not "dark coloured light."
As soon as I left the comfortable worlds of Apple ][ and MS-DOS and got shoved into Windows 3.0, I pined for a dark screen and started fucking with the color profile. When I was 12.
When I started running Solaris and Linux boxes in college, always had a dark terminal, and wrote my code in vi.
The older I get, the more I crave the darkness, and the UX bros are accommodating me.
This was certainly true in CRT times, but since the advent of LCD I prefer light mode, and it is easier on my eyes (as long as the brightness matches the ambient light). Only with OLED do I prefer dark mode, at night, at least on mobile devices (haven’t used an OLED desktop yet).
It is interesting how different people have different experiences. I grew up in the days of green monochrome terminals and monitors, and hated them. I bought an amber monitor as soon as they became available, and that helped a bit with the eyestrain.
Windows 3, Word for Windows and TSE were a godsend to me. Finally, I could read and write code and documents the way I thought they were intended to be viewed- dark text on a light background, mimicking real-world books and papers.
Today, I do use dark mode; my devices are set up to go dark late at night, in case I wake up and want to check something without burning my eyes. But that comprises a miniscule amount of the time I spend in front of a screen.
>Finally, I could read and write code and documents the way I thought they were intended to be viewed- dark text on a light background, mimicking real-world books and papers.
Real-world paper doesn't have a backlight behind it, projecting bright white light directly into your eyes. If you want to see documents the way they were "intended" to be viewed, you need to use an e-ink screen.
Because directly-transmitted light from an LCD screen's backlight doesn't scatter the way diffuse, reflected light from a piece of paper does. It's like comparing a laser to a flashlight.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense at all. An LCD screen emits photons of all wavelengths and in all directions, as does a piece of paper. That's totally different to flashlight vs. laser, where there is a physical distinction between the types of photons being emitted.
Or you have to use a highly reflective monitor. Or you have a blessed matte monitor but you have whiteboards, stainless steel appliances, glass, bright colored walls, and other stuff at various angles in the environment behind you. In which case the first thing you and everyone else trying to see past the reflections is going to do is dim the lights and lower the shades.
One should always adjust screen brightness to the ambient lighting. If ambient lighting is so low that an accordingly “bright” background provides too little contrast for black text, then yes, dark mode becomes preferable. This is probably a similar point as when printed material becomes too difficult to read. But the other option is to just not work in such a dim environment.
Same. I'm no doctor here but setting screen brightness to ambient level (typically low at 20-30%) with proper contrast can't be underestimated. And Flux or "night light" 24/7 to cut the blue.
I'm also sick of this trend in particular when websites or apps start shipping dark mode as default. It's not a good way to read text. Light text on a dark background reduces the amount of light getting into your eyes, it means your pupil needs to open wider and that has several negative effects one obvious is a halo-effect around letters that makes light text bleed into the background reducing readability. You don't really need to trust any science for that. Look at bright text on dark background and then look at a white wall. Chances are you can literally still see the text as an after image.
The reason why so many people seem to switch to it is because they literally live in goblin caves without proper lighting. Working in a well lit room and not at night and a properly configured monitor is a much better solution than dark mode.
I have a degenerative corneal disease and dark mode is hands down the best trend in interface design in recent memory (its gotten to the point where I use Tampermonkey scripts to force invert pages to help legibility.)
In any case, whether its a trend, saves battery, helps or hurts the eyes, I can certainly say its a great accessibility feature.
This blog post and most replies are misinformation and misunderstanding, and people posting their own anecdotes as advice.
If you aren't considering the macula, emmetropization, circadian rhythms, and corneal thinning, then please don't give advice to others on this topic.
Most people, this blog post author included, don't understand what "good for your eyes" means. For some reason, when talking about eye health, people resort to anecdotes and guessing.
Most likely, there is none. This blog post is just some BS that takes some talking points from one crappy study somewhere. The anecdotes in reply are just that: anedcotes, though honestly, they're probably overall of much higher value than the blog post, since they account for all kinds of issues that the post does not (such as the people with floaters).
I'm pretty sure there's no scientific consensus on this issue at all.
Its not clear at all that blue light has a significant impact on sleep or eyestrain; the science is ambigious.
The main piece of research referenced suggests that dark mode is worse in situations of low ambient light. But that was at small text sizes; of course, light text on a dark background has less contrast than dark text on a light background. That doesn't address the question of whether dark mode, used correctly, helps to alleviate eyestrain in low ambient light conditions. The suggestions offered seem to have little empirical evidence to back them up. If you feel more comfortable using dark mode at night there is little here to suggest that it would be harmful.
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[ 0.12 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadOf course, in addition I also only use some pretty dim LEDs from some x-mas decorations instead of the bright lamps everybody else seems to use when I walk around the neighborhood at night. I could not live with using those regular lamps any more. I've gotten used to having my rooms pretty dark whenever it's dark outside, light equivalent to maybe half a dozen candles.
Both the ambient light and the monitor have to be adjusted. They can use dark mode all they want, if they leave a regular lamp on it still is very bright.
Living like this I noticed how little light I actually need, by now I deliberately keep older - significantly dimmer than new - of those x-mas LED chains ("warm white" - more yellow by now), use the newer (still brighter) ones early in the evening, and later switch to the old even dimmer ones exclusively. And it still is more than enough, maybe three or four candles equivalent per room.
> It’s almost like too tongue in cheek that you write exactly like the techbros the article talks about. Did you even try to read the article?
> [...]
> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.
I did, and I think this kind of reasoning is not wise or meaningfully scientific. Experiencing physical pain in the response to something when you see it is way more immediate and way more relevant to one's own decisions regarding that stimulus than some study about average effects across a population of people who have different eyes than you in a situation that you can only hope is sufficiently analogous to your actual usage. (Note that GP writes only about their own experience— their comment does not contain a general argument.)
The article in the OP mentions that things may be different for people with various eye conditions. Guess what? Experiencing pain from using light mode is pretty much a defining symptom of such conditions.
> Light sensitivity is a condition in which bright lights hurt your eyes. Another name for this condition is photophobia.
https://www.healthline.com/health/photophobia
Through genetic testing, my sister has been diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease which is a cause of photophobia. Despite seeing eye doctors (including various specialists) her whole life, and knowing her entire life that bright light is painful for her, it took her decades to get that diagnosis.
According to your reasoning here, self-advocating for her health and accessibility based upon her own experience of her conditions would have been based on unworthy 'anecdotal proclamations' up until a few months ago.
Let's revisit that characterization:
> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.
It's very easy to find studies later than the date of the OP challenging this view on eye strain with respect to dark mode, including ones that consider the effects of blue light filters, e.g., https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9363189/
Why overcommit like that? How does that advance the credibility of any person or honor the science?
You really think you've read enough on this or that there's even been enough study of the topic for you to know with any certainty at all how someone else's eyes are working for them? Pure hubris.
All the data you can read doesn't mean a damn thing for Hosteur's personal experience. Neither you nor anyone you have read has studied that person's eyes, you actually have zero basis for telling them what is easier to read or how much strain they feel in their eyes.
The science on this has been going back and forth for at least the better part of two decades now. Nothing here has been proven, as is the case in most actual science. Any single study merely supports or doesn't support some view or hypothesis. It takes forever to confidently say we know how the eye is even working in these situations, let alone offer some broad recommendation for what every person ought to do.
Aside from that, you are misusing the concept of a categorical proof. The studies at hand don't even address the problem as a categorical concept space. There are no symbolic categories here, no functions mapping objects onto semantic spaces. You are stealing a term you don't understand from a field of mathematics you don't understand to shoot down a person you don't understand.
Stop being an ass and at least try to understand people before you try to tell them what their reality is and what they ought to be doing before bed.
I didn’t read the study itself, but usually the scientists (if they aren’t pushing an agenda) are aware of the limitations of their studies. It’s the people reporting and commenting on those studies that extrapolate unwarranted conclusions and generalizations from them.
Incidentally, for most people, this means that - unless they're spending most of their time outdoors - they're not getting enough light.
But having a monitor on in the dark, even if I use flux/night vision and even with low brightness physically hurts my eyes compared to just using dark mode on my apps.
In regards to eye strain with light mode, what I found important is to match screen brightness to „environmental brightness“ (don’t know the proper term).
As a rule of thumb, when I put a white paper in front of a white screen, the screen shouldn’t illuminate the paper more than the other lights in the room.
"Ambient" brightness. You were close, and that term worked well enough!
Oh yes, exactly this. At evening when sun is going down, then I can feel eye strain as I am looking into brighter and brighter monitor. Switching the light on will easily resolve it.
I used to use dark mode every where because it was somewhat accepted that the lesser bright the better.
But then I read a science-based post years ago about why light mode is better for our eyes, especially for people with astigmatism, as our eyes are naturally used to focus on objects on bright scenarios (sunlight).
Switched back to light theme right away, except for coding, because actually syntax highlighting is better with dark background.
Proposes that black on white text stimulates a pattern of expression in visual system that may contribute to myopia:
> Using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in young human subjects, we found that the choroid, the heavily perfused layer behind the retina in the eye, becomes about 16 µm thinner in only one hour when subjects read black text on white background but about 10 µm thicker when they read white text from black background. Studies both in animal models and in humans have shown that thinner choroids are associated with myopia development and thicker choroids with myopia inhibition. Therefore, reading white text from a black screen or tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white background may stimulate myopia.
You said WoB contributes to myopia.
Your own source says WoB inhibits myopia.
https://stitcher.io/blog/why-light-themes-are-better-accordi...
https://medium.com/codesphere-cloud/should-you-really-be-cod...
I don't have conclusive proof, of course, but in my experience it is those symptoms that get exacerbated.
I’m nearsighted, maybe that’s a differentiator? Although I‘m not sure if astigmatism always comes with nearsightednesd or not.
When switching to glasses it's actually bit better.
What works for the average is likely a good starting point. It is not necessarily the best for you and a given case (almost for sure different from the experimental ones).
Between bad contrast (I'm looking at you Solarized dark) and just picking plainly too dark background most dark themes are just bad. I wonder if that might've skewed results, kinda hard to make objective "best light/dark theme"
OLED mode on my phone is definitely a treat for battery life, but then darker actually means less light instead of dark coloured light.
As soon as I left the comfortable worlds of Apple ][ and MS-DOS and got shoved into Windows 3.0, I pined for a dark screen and started fucking with the color profile. When I was 12.
When I started running Solaris and Linux boxes in college, always had a dark terminal, and wrote my code in vi.
The older I get, the more I crave the darkness, and the UX bros are accommodating me.
Maybe it's just too late for me already.
Windows 3, Word for Windows and TSE were a godsend to me. Finally, I could read and write code and documents the way I thought they were intended to be viewed- dark text on a light background, mimicking real-world books and papers.
Today, I do use dark mode; my devices are set up to go dark late at night, in case I wake up and want to check something without burning my eyes. But that comprises a miniscule amount of the time I spend in front of a screen.
Real-world paper doesn't have a backlight behind it, projecting bright white light directly into your eyes. If you want to see documents the way they were "intended" to be viewed, you need to use an e-ink screen.
I cannot tolerate more than a page of dead tree books before getting into a major headache situation.
Some sort of back-lit magnifier is needed.
Any suggestions?
This is the key: Do you work on a very illuminated place? Use light mode. Do you work in somewhat darkness? Please use dark mode.
At least that's what I try to follow, otherwise at the end of the day my eyes gets very tired.
Depending of course on the individual screen, so occasionally it can be higher. And my phone outdoors on a sunny day may very well be at 100%.
The reason why so many people seem to switch to it is because they literally live in goblin caves without proper lighting. Working in a well lit room and not at night and a properly configured monitor is a much better solution than dark mode.
Dark-colored text over a light background will result in a higher contrast ratio than the opposite combination.
Design decisions must be objective and based on data.
As an option, the user must have the choice to apply different modes and themes based on A11 for low vision.
For example, the principle of higher contrast (dark-colored text on light background) will be literally painful for people with photophobia.
More on this subject: https://www.w3.org/TR/low-vision-needs/#light-sensitivity
I just want consistency so my eyes don't have to adjust between apps/sites and enough contrast for legibility (WCAG says 4.5:1).
In any case, whether its a trend, saves battery, helps or hurts the eyes, I can certainly say its a great accessibility feature.
This blog post and most replies are misinformation and misunderstanding, and people posting their own anecdotes as advice.
If you aren't considering the macula, emmetropization, circadian rhythms, and corneal thinning, then please don't give advice to others on this topic.
Most people, this blog post author included, don't understand what "good for your eyes" means. For some reason, when talking about eye health, people resort to anecdotes and guessing.
I'm pretty sure there's no scientific consensus on this issue at all.
Its not clear at all that blue light has a significant impact on sleep or eyestrain; the science is ambigious.
The main piece of research referenced suggests that dark mode is worse in situations of low ambient light. But that was at small text sizes; of course, light text on a dark background has less contrast than dark text on a light background. That doesn't address the question of whether dark mode, used correctly, helps to alleviate eyestrain in low ambient light conditions. The suggestions offered seem to have little empirical evidence to back them up. If you feel more comfortable using dark mode at night there is little here to suggest that it would be harmful.