The Dark Side of Dark Mode (tidbits.com) 131
Apple, which has already introduced "dark mode" in macOS, is widely expected to replicate this in its mobile operating system iOS this year. The move comes as a number of technology companies introduce dark mode in their apps and operating systems. But is it something everyone wants?
TidBITS: When text is white on a black background as it would be in Dark Mode, the whiteness of the lines lightens the edges of each line broadly on both sides, blurring the edge. If the thin lines of the text are black and the background is white, however, white from both sides washes over the entire line, lightening it evenly, so the edges aren't blurred. Blur is a bad thing because of how the human eye relies primarily on contrast when extracting detail from an image. In "Reality and Digital Pictures" (12 December 2005), Charles wrote: The eye does not see light per se, it sees changes in light -- contrast. If two objects do not contrast with one another, to the eye they meld into one. This fact makes controlling the contrast of adjacent details to be paramount in importance. He was focused on issues revolving around photographs, but contrast has been shown to be paramount in numerous studies of textual legibility as well.
Of course, contrast goes in both directions -- black on white and white on black both have high contrast. In the scientific literature, black on white is called "positive polarity," whereas white on black is called "negative polarity." Numerous studies over decades of research have found that positive polarity displays provide improved performance in a variety of areas. [...] Taptagaporn and Saito (1990, 1993) tracked changes in pupil size for different illumination levels as well as for the viewing of different visual targets, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) display, script and keyboard. They found less visual fatigue as measured by the frequency of changes in pupil size when working was accomplished with a positive than with a negative polarity display. Likewise, Saito, Taptagaporn, and Salvendy (1993) found faster lens accommodation and thus faster focusing of the eye with positive than with negative polarity displays.
To summarize, a dark-on-light display like a Mac in Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and it results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes: In an ageing society, age-related vision changes need to be considered when designing digital displays. Visual acuity testing and a proofreading task revealed a positive polarity advantage for younger and older adults. Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.
TidBITS: When text is white on a black background as it would be in Dark Mode, the whiteness of the lines lightens the edges of each line broadly on both sides, blurring the edge. If the thin lines of the text are black and the background is white, however, white from both sides washes over the entire line, lightening it evenly, so the edges aren't blurred. Blur is a bad thing because of how the human eye relies primarily on contrast when extracting detail from an image. In "Reality and Digital Pictures" (12 December 2005), Charles wrote: The eye does not see light per se, it sees changes in light -- contrast. If two objects do not contrast with one another, to the eye they meld into one. This fact makes controlling the contrast of adjacent details to be paramount in importance. He was focused on issues revolving around photographs, but contrast has been shown to be paramount in numerous studies of textual legibility as well.
Of course, contrast goes in both directions -- black on white and white on black both have high contrast. In the scientific literature, black on white is called "positive polarity," whereas white on black is called "negative polarity." Numerous studies over decades of research have found that positive polarity displays provide improved performance in a variety of areas. [...] Taptagaporn and Saito (1990, 1993) tracked changes in pupil size for different illumination levels as well as for the viewing of different visual targets, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) display, script and keyboard. They found less visual fatigue as measured by the frequency of changes in pupil size when working was accomplished with a positive than with a negative polarity display. Likewise, Saito, Taptagaporn, and Salvendy (1993) found faster lens accommodation and thus faster focusing of the eye with positive than with negative polarity displays.
To summarize, a dark-on-light display like a Mac in Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and it results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes: In an ageing society, age-related vision changes need to be considered when designing digital displays. Visual acuity testing and a proofreading task revealed a positive polarity advantage for younger and older adults. Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.
I am more concerned about,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's just a symptom (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is usually an accessibility feature on any given mobile device or properly designed app to do this, assuming you don't need any given screen to be gussied up with fancy patterns and whatnot. Yes, "properly designed" makes for some wonderfully true Scotsmen.
I exclusively read books and web serials in dark mode on oled screens. Specifically my V30 and an older model Lenovo Yoga I got off ebay. Not having a mass of white lighting screaming at my eyes is a must have. If oled displays weren't financially v
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Its possibly not, only your perception of it (and mine)
But I tell you what is a huge impact on this - and that's the brightness of displays. So while white on black appears easy to read because bright white text is clear against a dark background, the opposite of black text on a blindingly bright white background is not comfortable.
So its not the black on white, its the black on blindingly bright white.
I found many years ago when Windows was customisable, that changing the "window background" colour to a ve
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Dude, they just changed the symbols. Stopped using those old outdated swastrikas. Now they wear a twin black and red flag inside a black circle.
And you probably think they not the facists!
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Some Android devices do. It's manufacturer dependent, but for example last time I checked Samsung devices let you choose the font. Lineage too, as well as supporting colour themes.
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Why put a comma between the subject, and the rest of the sentence?
You, are an imbecile. The person who taught you English, is a cunt.
It. 's annoying, isn't it?
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Realizes Hobnoxious is actually William Shatner's pseudonym....
HIYA BILL!!
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Monkey see monkey do.
Most new design is monkey do
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Not as bad as I thought (Score:4, Insightful)
I was ready to declare these tidbits folks idiots... until I skimmed the article.
They're right for calling out Apple's marketing folks for claiming "dark mode" to have benefits it doesn't/won't.
Enough with the BS already, Apple. Don't ruin a good thing.
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I love Dark Mode except one deal killer (Score:2)
I used dark mode for a while but one activity just made it unusable so I went back to the light.
When you cut and paste text from a website that is black on white into an e-mail the text comes out white or unreadable!.
I kept expecting them to fix this oversight but they didn't so I gave up.
Otherwise I immensely prefer it
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Paste as unformatted text. It will drop the website font preferences and use whatever the program you're pasting the text into is set to.
Re: I love Dark Mode except one deal killer (Score:1)
Send plaint text emails then and not html ones.
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I kept expecting them to fix this oversight but they didn't so I gave up.
Congratulations on learning how to copy and paste with and without formatting today. You're going to get a hang of this computer thing in no time. *thumbs up*
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return to the 80s! (Score:2)
and VT-100 text. on a $1000 or higher smartphone. where's the DB-25 connector?
Re:Not as bad as I thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally agree. I work overnight and dark mode suits my lifestyle just fine.
Side note: If they want to change something, make fruit labels use more contrasting colors. Not only are the numbers the clerk needs to type in really small but some of the color combinations are the worst! Saw one person pull out a magnifying glass the other day because he couldn't distinguish the white digits on the light yellow background!
Re:Not as bad as I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
A whole lot of people say that shiny reflective screens are good, too.
That doesn't make them right.
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A whole lot of people say that shiny reflective screens are good, too.
That doesn't make them right.
mmm it depends, for photo editing, videographers and designers whether pro or hobby shiny screens can be the right choice. I know you're sort of joking but on high pixel density panels with one of those anti glare gritty/orange peel texture coatings it masks high frequency detail and I can personally attest to that.
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A shiny screen is not a bad thing when you can control your environment - they can work great for a dimly lit or dark room where there's no obnoxious reflections. That's how TV's get away with them. And that's the big reason they are so stupid on laptops, since the whole point of the laptop is that you're going to be using it in places where you can't control the lighting.
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I started switching to dark mode for similar reasons. When you tap a key to wake up a machine and a square meter of LCD surface slams on bright white it hurts. Then, after you get used to it and look away you're blind unless it's full daylight. But they're also correct about text; white text on black background is a bit less well defined than black on white and that does annoy, but not enough to change back.
Your Welcome (Score:1)
Re:Your Welcome (Score:4, Funny)
My welcome is different from your welcome.
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I bought that album on cassette a few weeks after release. I had not really heard much of it and bought it because it was playing at the record store while I browsed.
Driving around back country roads smoking weed at two or three in the morning with a carload of friends.
Time plays.....lulls you into complacency.....and then....ALARMS GO OFF!!
I damned near drove us into a ditch.
Became one of my favorite albums.
and yet these conclusions assume your're normal (Score:3, Interesting)
best thing that happened to me recently was when Microsoft Explorer turned dark; I've always found vast acres of white make for a really hard time getting things done; glare makes the words and letters almost dance; and on bad days my eyes would hurt from the bright; so Dark Modes are a godsend.
Re:and yet these conclusions assume your're normal (Score:4, Informative)
Long ago I turned down the brightness on my monitors due to large patches of white everywhere.
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Agreed - all my text editors and IDEs are set to light text on dark background to avoid rapidly developing eye strain. I do often find white on black a bit much, especially on a bright monitor, but tone both extremes down just a bit bringing them towards midrange, and I've long found light text on a dark background far easier on the eyes - at least on backlit screens. On paper, I'll take dark on light.
SCREW DARK MODE! (Score:4, Insightful)
I am NOT a bat and I enjoy sunlight!
Blues and greys work just fine.
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I am a bat. Screw the light, bonus points for the improved battery life too.
Re: SCREW DARK MODE! (Score:1)
Makes sense (Score:3)
Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.
You know ... like almost every piece of printed matter you've ever read in your life?
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That was to save ink and because white ink is hard to do. Had nothing to do with eye comfort.
Also for my it isn't "practically every peice of printed matter" I've read. I think I'm running about 50/50 only because most software/websites make it impossible to turn the background black and stay usable. I pine for the days of VT-100s. If I could I'd do everything in "negative" mode. Much easier on my eyes, despite what these guys say. Also psychologically I find it more "positive" because the text is lit
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Literally every part of what you said is false.
Paper is a subtractive medium. While you could do it, you'd need a universally agreed to black pigment which could be easily bleached. Of course, as soon as you do that, it's easily bleached by light, oxidation, etc. And the leaking pens now probably bleach fabric, skin, etc.
Also, because it's subtractive, it is far more vulnerable to lighting conditions. Screens are the opposite process.
Using an opaque white pigment on black paper is no longer ink. At that poi
Re:WTF did I just waste time reading? (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a time I often visited a website which had all its articles written with white font on black background. The eye fatigue was enormous. I could read a couple pages at most before my eyes started watering like crazy. Nothing like this happened with black (or dark) font on white background.
Now, I am not saying one is generally better than the other. I am saying choice is paramount.
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Indeed. I do mostly stay away from white on black as too intense, but light, pale "pastelish" colors on a nicely contrasting not-quite-black dark color is about as good as it gets.
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This is due to the choice of fonts and contrast levels, including to the surrounding room, not due to the dark theme.
Or TFA could be suggesting that the theme is also an influence.
I rarely if ever see white text on a black background though. Either the background is dark without being black, or the text is light without being white, or both.
That was the case on old terminals and continues to be the case pretty much everywhere now.
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There's extensions that you can install for converting webpages into dark mode. There's one called "Dark Reader" which does a pretty good job with JIRA (at least the version of JIRA I have to deal with). Or if you want to do it the old school way just hack up a user.css to do what you want.
Disclaimer: I've only done this with Firefox, I don't actually know about Chrome.
As Matter of Personal Preference (Score:5, Funny)
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I prefer green on black, just the way god intended it.
You misspelled "orange on black".
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You misspelled "amber on black".
I misspelled "candlelight through holes in cardstock".
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There was research way way back that showed that green-on-black and amber-on-black were easier on the eyes than white-on-black or black-on-white. I like green-on-black better because I'm partial to green, but I have to grudgingly admit that amber-on-black might be a little easier to read.
What did I just read...!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, what did I just read...!? Users want dark mode. Companies are adding dark mode. Dark mode is optional, and generally off by default. *BUT* we shouldn't do this, because dark mode is shit on a CRT monitor, which nobody has touched in a decade or more!? I'm absolutely dumbfounded here.
And yes, I get that everyone is different, but honestly I can read SIGNIFICANTLY faster in dark mode. Been coding for over 20 years, and once I've made the switch, I cannot go back. Bright backgrounds are just too har
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I use flux together with the dark mode -- My Visual Studio is in dark mode but most of the other surface area is not -- and tone down all the blue colors, so the white looks a bit sepia. Not very exciting but I'm guessing that's why it feels easier on the eyes.
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Software cargo-culting is darker... (Score:3)
I actually like dark mode but one of the main reasons is it runs counter to "tiny thin gray text on bright white background" movement. That said, every single vendor coming out with dark mode is just a symptom of the cargo culting going on in software dev these days. DevOps gives you a lot of good automation tools, etc. but it also gives the feature treadmill...everything has to be a feature, you have to release every week/day/hour, so it becomes easier to just copy something else you saw your competitor do and call it a revolutionary new feature.
I think when the Second Dotcom Bubble bursts, they'll study DevOps and find that wiring up programmers to dashboards 24/7 leads to burnout even if their work becomes easier. It's too easy for a lousy manager to look at a burndown chart or a list of someone's activity and pressure them into coding faster and rolling out more features. My opinion is that the only reason it's working well for startups is because there's a new hungry crop of CS students out there who haven't had crappy jobs that grind them down yet.
Point well missed, Dark Mode is about Sleep.. (Score:1)
Yes there are some downsides to Dark Mode, but its focus is to interfere less with sleep, and it does that demonstrably.
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Astigmatism, not just aging (Score:2)
https://gizmodo.com/the-surpri... [gizmodo.com]
and
https://tatham.blog/2008/10/13... [tatham.blog]
go into how people with astigmatism - a rather large % of the population - are less likely to love light text on dark backgrounds.
There doesn't have to be one true color arrangement for everyone (though, as with many accessibility features, there's a tension between letting designers have complete control and letting users adjust things that make their lives easier
Is more choice bad? No. (Score:1)
Dark Mode is not something I personally use or like, I really prefer dark text on light background.
But I really understand the fervor for some people to have the text that way, for them I'm sure it really is more readable. So I fully support adding Dark Mode everywhere so that people can have a reading environment that works best for them.
Any kind of generalized study will never be true of all people.
darkmode for apps. (Score:1)
Incorrect assumption in article (Score:5, Insightful)
Numerous studies over decades of research have found that positive polarity displays provide improved performance in a variety of areas.
This assumes nothing happened to monitor technology for decades, which clearly isn't the case. We can't assume a modern monitor to have the same effect as was measured before the monitor technology was in mass production.
If we look at a CRT monitor, black means no light while white means full light. Today a monitor has a constant on light and then the pixels are filters to block light. This means black isn't completely off. Next we take light level stability into account. CRTs gives a powerful light, which fades until refreshed. Backlight is always on, avoiding the flickering. There is also better control of the light level as a user setting. Monitor brightness is also generally higher. In fact there are monitors today where minimum brightness is higher than the max brightness of some CRTs from decades ago.
Yes I know there are multiple monitor types and backlight can be controlled by both voltage and PWM. If anything it just makes my argument stronger because it means more diversity to take into account when trying to make a general statement.
All this combined means.... well good question. What we do know is that we can't assume the same result on modern monitors to be the same as the test results from "decades ago". 1990 and 1993 are mentioned and I can tell you for certain that monitors from back them were horrible for the eyes compared to what we have now.
My personal experience is the total opposite of what the article claims. The high light level of white screens strain my eyes while dark mode makes my eyes relax. More relaxed eyes makes it easier to look at text for hours and dark mode has increased my coding productivity. However I have to admit that my eyes are more sensitive to light than the average eyes. While that makes it difficult for me to make a general statement, it does add another variable, which is an issue for the article: all human eyes aren't the same. What's best for some might not be best for all. It's not like everybody needs the same type of glasses either.
Does this mean light or dark mode is best? I can't answer in general. All I can do is to present one case where dark mode is best (me+my setup+my workroom light level+whatever else applies), meaning it's a proof that "light mode is always best" is wrong. It doesn't matter if I'm unique because just one example is enough to disproof "always". I will not even take a guess at how often light or dark is best.
Also what happened to research pointing towards our eyes straining because of too much light from modern screens? And too much blue light in screens.
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The problem is not the monitors. The problems is our eyes.
At night, light tends to bleed around the source a little bit making them blurry. The effect is even worse for people with astigmatism (28% of the population). https://kutv.com/resources/med... [kutv.com]
White on black has the same effect, light bleeds around the text slightly making font a bit blurry regardless of the quality of the monitor. This was as true 20 years ago as it is today.
Black text on white causes more light to enter your eye, which cause
No (Score:2)
>"But is it something everyone wants?"
No. Of course no. And absolutely no. There is your obvious answer to that question.
What users want on most systems is the ability to CONTROL and CUSTOMIZE the look/sizes/fonts/colors. So adding a dark mode? Great, no prob- add whatever you like, as long as users are not FORCED to use it.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for Apple hate? (Score:2)
Look, there's no doubt that there are arguments to be made against using dark mode, and the article lays a number of them out in a fair manner, but arguing against adding it as a preference that users can choose to use or not—as was done when the summary asked the leading question of "is it something everyone wants?"—is profoundly absurd.
As a father with a one-month old infant, I would love it if my eyes could transition more easily from using an iPad in the dark to seeing my way in the dark to
Bullshit (Score:1)
Inverting colors will only fuck shit up if you're doing stupid shit like sub-pixel rendering and not accounting for that when inverting colors, or using a backlight and a shitty panel that lets a lot of bloom through.
Turn off sub pixel rendering (fuck the color fringing it introduces - I hate hate hate hate hate it) or at least make it operate in greyscale only. The resolution of your devices should be high enough to render text without shitty hacks. But with iPhones? Even the $1100 XS Max will give you s
How is this not obvious? (Score:1)
Decades of research, then another decade in the 90s of everyone rediscovering for themselves how bad light fonts are on dark backgrounds when everyone made their own website. It was a shitshow, and generally plain old dark text on light backgrounds became the norm again. So called dark mode is just another fashion trend that's been available forever in custom themes, and it's just making a temporary comeback. Likely so marketing can come up with 'light mode' in a few years and say they're doing something cu
Give yourself to the Dark Side. (Score:2)
I've been using dark mode for a few months, both in MacOS and Firefox (via the Midnight Lizard add-on). Unfortunately Thunderbird doesn't seem to offer dark mode and the glare of that white email window is a terrible eyesore.
My 27 inch monitor is partly to blame. At its lowest brightness it is too dark to read. The next click up is too bright for my old eyes. So, yes, my eyes take some blame. I like to work in a fairly dark room and that too is a factor.
Some web pages can be a challenge in a darkened Firefo
The real problem is *gray* text (Score:2)
The modern cool thing to do is to make text gray-on-white or gray-on-black. The designers then make the titles and borders real black so they look super sharp. In exchange, regular text is harder to read. Classic form over function. Lots of web sites are doing this these days, even the product I am working on.
We got customer feedback that the text is too small and too hard to read. I look at the CSS, and the text is actually like #555555 on #FFFFFF. The problem isn't that the font is too small, it's t
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Perfect for video editing (Score:2)
IIRC, "Dark mode" was first introduced on the Mac for FCPX. Worked brilliantly - less extraneous light while editing video was very handy. When it was introduced in MacOS 10.14 I tried it for 5 minutes and turned it off. Too hard to use.
I'm glad dark mode is coming back (Score:3)
The funny thing about "dark mode" is that it's what (nearly) everyone already had, before we got web browsers training us to accept glaringly-bright reverse-video, thanks to Mosaic's annoying default style. "Dark mode" was the norm until the mid 1990s, and it was the web that dragged me into stoic acceptance of the new-fangled ubiquitous reverse-video. And hell yes we liked it! Now we will finally put things back to how they were always supposed to be! ;-)
That is, assuming you ever left. The web itself was hopeless, but I can't be the only person who still composes in a text editor (which is, of course, white text on black background) and then pastes into the browser's textarea.
You say ESC [?5h, but I say ESC [?5l.
Mode for LED displays (Score:2)
Is this a preparation for the arrival of LED displays that draw much less power when most pixels on the screen are dark? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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So some schmucks... (Score:2)
...think it a Good Idea to stare into a light bulb? Idiots.
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On programs that don't do Dark Mode well, I wear some blue-blocking glasses. Between that and dark mode, my eyes feel a world better. Several of the people I work with are having eyesight problems. Well, yeah. Staring into a light bulb all day. Duh. They even see me using dark mode, but they sit there with the screen just burning holes into their eyeballs.
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