Pretty much anytime I have to read some white or light grey text on a dark background it is punishing on my eyes and I end up with light-lines in my vision temporarily after. I’ve given up on entire websites because they only have a dark theme and the simplified read mode doesnt work. On occasion, when I really needed to read a lot of text from somewhere I will copy and paste into a word processor. Light mode, or anything with dark text on light background, doesn’t strain my eyes nearly so much.
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Finally someone I can relate to! Every time I said dark themes hurt my eyes all my friends insisted it was the opposite.
Same here. Black text on white background is the best for reading. The only downside is how goddamn bright it is at night in bed. But I should probably sleep at those hours anyway.
I personally belong to the dark theme cult, but this spring we had to rent a flat for a while where ambient light conditions were just horrible. For the first time in my life I just HAD to use light themes everywhere because dark themes would just make my eyes hurt after a while. So maybe people who prefer light themes just spend most of their time somewhere with dim uneven lights?
I live in Australia, very sunny most of the year. Light theme feels like I'm shining a flashlight into my eyes even during the day. I just don't understand light theme.
Depends on your device
My 5 year old laptop's screen is so dim that on bright days you fully can't see dark mode, but my phone and monitor work just fine on dark mode on all but the brightest days
Light theme in the day, dark theme at night. Switched automatically by sunset/sunrise time.
I never understood the cult mentality about it, it's obviously better to automatically switch depending on light conditions around you.
I get the impression that the preference for dark mode tends to be more common in Millennial/Gen-Z men.
As an older Gen-X, I cannot stand having dark mode on during the day or light mode at night. I use auto whenever it is available. I don’t know why!
My daughter and her female friends do not have dark mode during the day. My younger coworkers often have dark mode at work, but only the male ones.
I’m curious about those who use dark mode all the time: were you born after 1980 and male?
1995/m here and I exclusively use dark mode. Preferably white text on a black background (sometimes called LED dark mode). I'm not sure if your generation + gender theory holds but I will say that the games and software I played growing up used a combination of dark and light for UI and menus.
Interesting point, maybe people with more gaming growing up prefer the dark mode. Much of the gaming era came around after my time!
Female, born before 1980, prefer dark mode, no wallpaper.
I find that most apple users i know use light and android users tend to use dark. Apple users care less about customisation maybe? I was excited to finally get widgets on my work iPad. I told several apple friends about it and they just looked at me blankly.
Saves battery only on oled, but that’s a valid point. and easier in eyes is highly debatable! I absolutely prefer light theme at bright environments but dark theme at night.
I have astigmatism, so dark mode is harder on the eyes when reading text. So, even though I like the aesthetics of dark mode, I need to use light mode to not put so much strain on my eyes.
The battery thing is not true most of the time and the rest is subjective.
What's to say either dark or light is better in all cases all of the time?
Depends on if the display is OLED, right?
Kind of. An LCD display has one backlight which illuminates the entire screen with one brightness. So a black screen and a white screen will use the same amount of electricity if both screens are set to the same brightness, even though to us a white screen looks brighter. Using a dark theme won't save any electricity, but it won't use any more either.
Other display types use self illuminating pixels. Like OLEDs and plasma screens. So a screen which is mostly black uses a lot less electricity than a screen which is mostly any other color but black. Using a dark theme would use substantially less electricity.
Even a CRT would use less electricity if you switch to dark theme while still using one, because the cathode ray wouldn't have to light up the black pixels.
Not entirely true for LCD. Some LCD displays have zones. And each zone with it's back-light.
If a zone is completely dark (not grey or without even a single white pixel), the back-light will shut off.
However on phones, it is mostly a single zone.
Battery life is rarely a concern for me; with standard use, not charging all day, my phone is still usually above 30% when I go to plug it in before bed, dark theme is most certainly not easier on my eyes when my surroundings are bright.
I like my phone to look nice and bright, dark mode just make it look so gloomy and makes me feel depressed.
Edit: Also, normally when you read on paper, its a white sheet and black text, reversing the colors just make it... odd.
Most comes down to contrast to background.
In daylight and with good displays, light theme is much easier on my eyes than dark theme.
At night, it depends whether the screen can be tuned down enough to fit into the environment, then it doesn’t make much difference.
If dark theme works for you in your setup, enjoy.
A lower contrast light theme is better for your eyes in brightly lit spaces. Lower contrast dark theme for dark or dim spaces.
Light theme for the outside boys that touch grass.
If the dark theme is a black background with white text, it hurts my eyes. Dark grey like Lemmy or Gnome works great and is generally my preference.
I don’t know where you’re “getting easier on the eyes”. Light mode makes me feel so much more relaxed
For me both must coexist. The time light allows me to be able to see the development environment and the elements in situations when there is a lot of light (even if the monitor is anti-glare the light theme is better), while when the light decreases the dark theme does not "shoot a blinding light".
Basically, light or dark? both.
On my phone, it changes to light/dark depending on day/night. For my work computer, it’s only light mode. The ambient light in my office is bright enough that it actually makes it hard to read text in dark mode. Light mode seems easier on my eyes
Dark theme in low light, light theme in bright light.
Unless I can dim and darken the environment, sometimes light is just more legible. I switch to dark as soon as I can, but I don't turn it into a religion (I used to)
Dark theme is hell on astigmatisms; the letters just bleed everywhere and I get wicked eye strain.
I like dark themes, but not black themes. Give me a dark grey, dark blue/navy, dark purple, but black screen and white text is way too aggressive on the eyes.
Also, what happened that we only really get a "dark or light" theme these days if we beg the Tech overlords?
Back in the olden days of Windows 3.1, 95, etc, we could them the shit balls out of our computers. Suddenly 10000 years later, we have to beg Apple or some developer to give us pre-made themes? Sad.
I'm just annoyed about the lack of consistency in what products do and do not support a dark mode, especially when other products in the same suite do.
I'm limited to using MS Office at work and love that Word, Outlook, OneNote and Drive all have dark themes and a quick toggle button to check accessibility/accommodate light-lovers if I'm screen sharing... But why was Excel left out ☹️? And a bunch of other apps, like Planner and Forms.
I like the transition depending on sunlight. Both light mode and dark mode look great to me.
saves your battery
Maybe, maybe not. For OLED screens, where the pixels themselves generate the brightness, then an overall darker image will save power. For LCD screens with backlights it's the opposite: the backlight is always on and the lowest power state of an individual pixel is to let the light pass through unmodified - the part that costs power is turning the pixel 9n so that it blocks the light to make a black dot. So, your statement isn't true for all (or even most) devices.
Next: I find bright text on a black background to be hardest and most jarring to my vision. Humans have been reading black text on a light medium for millennia; it is natural. Light mode, for me, is easier to read and least tedious for my eyeballs.
I also just think that a light mode look is more polished looking...cleaner.
Dark mode is harder on the eyes and harder to read.
Dark 'themes'of old were because of flicker on crts. We aren't using crts now. The contrast of dark themes is anything but easy on the eyes.
It's easier on my eyes. I wonder if it has anything to do with vision issues. We need a poll to test the correlation of dark theme preference and astigmatism.
Bright text on dark background hurts my eyes. It's like it burns in on my vision. As another commenter says, it stays before my eyes after I look away Dark text on light background feels natural, like a newspaper or a book. I use warm color temperatures after dark, it's very comfy.
When I read text in dark mode and look away I can still see an image of the text in my vision for several seconds. I don't know if that's bad or not but it keeps me in light mode most of the time.
I switched to auto mode after listening to the huberman labs podcast ep on eye health
What a backwards question. The world is light. Text is normally black or blue on white. There are no good reasons to turn your online experience into a dive into a well of darkness where you have to squint and strain your eyes to see the text.
Dark mode at work, light mode at home/on personal devices. No real explanation why.