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Displays

Dark Mode vs. Light Mode: Which Is Better? (nngroup.com) 104

Recently a well-respected UI consulting firm (the Nielsen Norman Group) published their analysis of academic studies on the question of whether Dark Mode or Light Mode was better for reading? Cosima Piepenbrock and her colleagues at the Institut für Experimentelle Psychologie in Düsseldorf, Germany studied two groups of adults with normal (or corrected-to-normal) vision: young adults (18 to 33 years old) and older adults (60 to 85 years old). None of the participants suffered from any eye diseases (e.g., cataract)... Their results showed that light mode won across all dimensions: irrespective of age, the positive contrast polarity was better for both visual-acuity tasks and for proofreading tasks...

Another study, published in the journal Human Factors by the same research group, looked at how text size interacts with contrast polarity in a proofreading task. It found that the positive-polarity advantage increased linearly as the font size was decreased: namely, the smaller the font, the better it is for users to see the text in light mode. Interestingly, even though their performance was better in the light mode, participants in the study did not report any difference in their perception of text readability (e.g., their ability to focus on text) in light versus dark mode — which only reinforces the first rule of usability: don't listen to users...

While dark mode may present some advantages for some low-vision users — in particular, those with cloudy ocular media such as cataract, the research evidence points in the direction of an advantage of positive polarity for normal-vision users. In other words, in users with normal vision, light mode leads to better performance most of the time... These findings are best explained by the fact that, with positive contrast polarity, there is more overall light and so the pupil contracts more. As a result, there are fewer spherical aberrations, greater depth of field, and overall better ability to focus on details without tiring the eyes...

That being said, we strongly recommend that designers allow users to switch to dark mode if they want to — for three reasons: (1) there may be long-term effects associated with light mode; (2) some people with visual impairments will do better with dark mode; and (3) some users simply like dark mode better.

The long-term effects associated with light mode come from an "intriguing" 2018 study they found which argued that 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..."

The researchers wrote that myopia "is tightly linked to the educational status and is on the rise worldwide."
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Dark Mode vs. Light Mode: Which Is Better?

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  • I only speak for myself, but I find Dark Mode dreary and harder on my eyes than just dimming the "normal mode", whatever that's called.

    • Light mode washes out the text. Might be the cataract though... Either way, for me dark mode is much easier on the eyes. What really sucks are the damn people that use that new gray text on white. They should be horsewhipped!

      • Re:Dark Mode = ugh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @07:29PM (#59734292) Journal

        They should be horsewhipped!

        You're far kinder than I would be. Horsewhipping would just be the start of their punishment.

        For example, go look at the regular, peon-level Bank Of America home page: Bank of America [bankofamerica.com].
        Look at the Sign In button. Can't miss it- it's bright red with crisp white line around it, easy to see.

        Now go to the Bank of America Small Business [bankofamerica.com] home page and look at the Sign In button.
        The button is pasty-white/gray rectangle. Now, where the fuck is the border? On a properly adjusted monitor it's a faint white line that's barely visible. That's a shit UI design right there. What the fuck are they doing with their interface?

        • I once heard a story, probably apocryphal, of some greek philosopher who'd offended the local tyrant. His punishment was death by having a soldier stick is fist into his nether regions and yank out his intestines.

          I'd use that as the starting step for the people who push this kind of UI design. After that, things would get a bit more ugly.

          • I once heard a story, probably apocryphal, of some greek philosopher who'd offended the local tyrant. His punishment was death by having a soldier stick is fist into his nether regions and yank out his intestines.

            This is reminding me of that Jennifer Lopez/Vince Vaughn movie The Cell.
            I never expected I would say "man, that Jennifer Lopez movie was torture porn" and not having that be a metaphor, but there were some gut-wrenching (literally) scenes from that movie.

        • For example, go look at the regular, peon-level Bank Of America home page: Bank of America [bankofamerica.com].
          Look at the Sign In button. Can't miss it- it's bright red with crisp white line around it, easy to see.

          Now go to the Bank of America Small Business [bankofamerica.com] home page and look at the Sign In button.

          Boy, I like the small business signon much better. Black text on grey background was much easier to read than white text on red background. I agree with you about the border though -- it needed a black rectangle instead of a white one. They took two steps forward, one step back.

      • Light mode washes out the text. Might be the cataract though... Either way, for me dark mode is much easier on the eyes. What really sucks are the damn people that use that new gray text on white. They should be horsewhipped!

        No better is dark grey on black, the new default for editor controls its seems. Both Atom and Sublime do this by default in many versions and OS's I have encountered them on. And the dark grey icons are also tiny on any reasonably large screen.

        "Dark mode" seems to be regarded as "cool" by developers now, who wonder aloud why you are not following the herd (I prefer white screens).

        • The only advantages dark mode has that I know of is that it saves battery on portables, and it doesn't disturb my bedmate when I get that 3:00 am urge to googlle "Why parsnips anyway, and how come nobody has yet perfected the mechanical carrot?"
    • Re:Dark Mode = ugh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @04:30PM (#59733868) Homepage

      I find that I want as little light as possible coming from the 4 screens I look at all day so for me dark mode wins but it doesn't mean that it is better for everybody I suppose. My whole desktop is configured for dark mode and most of the programs I use a lot are as well. For example, I use Darkest Dark Theme in eclipse and Dark Reader in firefox.

      • Same - four screens on light mode is simply way too much light to be comfortable. I donâ(TM)t want to squint while working. That said, for longer form text and emails I like black on white for many of the reasons cited in TFA.

        • See if you con find some brightness controls. Most monitors have them these days.

          • Compressing the dynamic range of my monitors is not a better solution. I want less white not dim white.

            • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

              Exactly the same here! I tried dim/light modes but it causes more strain on my eyes than no mode at all e.g. out of the box mode you get on most devices. Of course we know how to play with monitor settings, I do it sometime on top of using dark mode. I also keep the X gui contrast/gamma/brightness setting panel minimized on my desktop which allows me to fine tune independently my monitors without even using the hardware monitor settings most of the times.

      • I frequently feel slight discomfort when looking at bright screens, and have the urge to squint the eyes. Dark screens feel way more comfortable and much easier on my eyes. I go dark mode whenever possible.

        • I think dark mode is much more natural too. Our natural surroundings are almost always muted colors. When did cavemen ever look at a pure, bright-white surface? Only when everything is covered in snow, perhaps, which for most cavemen would have been the minority of the year. It doesn't seem natural or healthy to look at a white screen.

    • I find Dark Mode dreary

      Would you say you find Light Mode exciting and optimistic?

    • Personally, I start to get a 'static effect' trying to read white text on black. The impression of the text I was just looking at stays on my vision just long enough as my eyes move left to right that the black spaces stop looking black, similar to how you can still see patterns when you close your eyes after looking at bright light.
      • Personally, I start to get a 'static effect' trying to read white text on black. The impression of the text I was just looking at stays on my vision just long enough as my eyes move left to right that the black spaces stop looking black, similar to how you can still see patterns when you close your eyes after looking at bright light.

        I'm no ophthalmologist, but I think you should see an ophthalmologist.

        I'm not kidding, this can sometimes be an indicator of early-stage eye problems. Please go see an ophthalmologist.

      • Personally, I start to get a 'static effect' trying to read white text on black.

        Yep, this. Black backgrounds mean your eyes turn up their sensitivity and it causes after images.

    • The larger the screen (or screens) the harder it gets for me without a "dark" font. Especially if there is not a lot of ambient light, it is easier than having to play with the screen settings several times a day. I will only switch to a brighter theme if there is too much light and the glare gets in the way ( if I am outside or there light enters the window at a specific angle ) For laptops there are also battery considerations to keep in mind keeping the screen brightness high to clearly see the letters
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I only speak for myself, but I find Dark Mode dreary and harder on my eyes than just dimming the "normal mode", whatever that's called.

      I think the problem is "black creep" - if I give you a white square on a black background, and a black square on a white background, the white square will seem "smaller".

      People who work in graphics design know this - white text always looks smaller when placed on a dark background, so if you're doing this, you must enlarge the text (e.g., if you want text to be 12pt, use 14p

    • I used ot be fine with light mode all the time - much easier than dark.
      But then I got old, my contrast sensitivity worsened, and now I have an environment where I tend to use the computer in the dark as well.

      And I found dark mode works better, its probably all down to the environment and I should change things so I have a light that provides illumination without the glare, but there's obviously times when dark mode works better.

      The biggest problem is when you don't have a choice - if you are running a dev e

  • because:

    The long-term effects associated with light mode come from an "intriguing" 2018 study they found which argued that 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..."

    I mean, isn't that enough of a reason? Also doesn't white on black use less power? Except maybe on EInk/Epaper devices...

      Soo ecological... /s

    • Also doesn't white on black use less power?

      On an LCD screen: No.

      On an OLED screen: Yes.

    • I am 49 and always had perfect vision until a few years ago when I started needing reading glasses. Maybe coincidentally the problems roughly correspond with using switching to a dark them UI. Just for laughs I am going to switch to light theme and see if my vision comes back...
  • One rather obvious point: The more light there is, the more the pupils in the eyes contract. Smaller pupils mean sharper focus - who hasn't taken something out into bright sunlight to see it better? So saying that light mode is especially helpful for small font sizes is...kind of a no brainer.

    That said, dark mode is more suitable to certain circumstances. Just as an example: I'm sitting here, late at night, in a comfortable, dimly lit room - and staring at this blazing white screen. Not nice, and I'm going

    • Absolute performance might be better with light mode but I found after several hours it is tiring.
      • See if you can find a brightness control.

      • by Calydor ( 739835 )

        That's what I take away from the summary as well. They are looking at performance ratings, ie. how useful it is for work, rather than an all-day comfort when reading a book online or something similar.

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )
        While I understand that bright light can be fatiguing to the retina, I find that reading white text on a black background strains my eyes too much, as it is harder for me to focus.
        Having said that, I remember when my first boss got our first work computer, an IBM PC with a monitor using green text on a black background. The one program I really needed to use required 16 colors. So he had to buy a Hercules card to make the 2-color monitor work with the 16-color program, turning the colors into 16 shades o
        • After reading through the article comments I realized that my eyesight went from perfect to horrid (needing reading glasses) roughly around the time I switched to dark themes. I thought it was my almost 50 age- I am going to go light and see if my vision returns.
  • "Light mode" works for paper, or e-reader, or anything that doesn't actively blaze photons at your face.

    For everything else: Dark or black background, text on top with the color of your choice. Standard console gray is fine for me, but good old VT terminals with green or amber displays are fine too.

    With white backgrounds, I at least always need to either increase font sizes or make them bold or somehow else zoom in. The reason is that the if the text is black, it's actually showing as absence of light, and

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:29PM (#59734154)
      If you darken the monitor so its white point is the same as a sheet of paper in the room, then the emissive display is identical to the passive display (white paper). Most of the problems people have with a primarily white display is because they have their monitor's brightness set too high for the ambient lighting.

      The reason dark mode works better in a dim or dark room is because dimming the display in light mode to match a white sheet of paper in a dark room pretty much makes it illegible. Switching to bright text on a dark background allows you to get legible brightness without overwhelming your eyes with the overall brightness.

      For me personally, I have my e-book reader set to display green text on a black background. I have a fairly strong prescription for myopia (about -5.0 diopters). I've noticed my glasses introduce a fair amount of chromatic aberration (white separates out into its constituent colors) if I'm looking through anywhere but the center. But I can eliminate the chromatic aberration if I use only one primary color. Since your visual acuity is highest in green [gamesx.com], I turn off the blue and red entirely.

      The only choice then is green text on a black background, or black text on a green background. I tried both and settled on green text on a black background. When I tried black text on a green background, the letters seemed blurrier and more indistinct. My theory is that your brain uses the different color receptors in your eyes to reinforce the sharpness of whatever image you're seeing (i.e. the luminosity info is still useful even if the color info is not). So the edges of black text on a white background are sharpened by all three color receptors in your eye seeing the edges in the same place. With only one primary color, this isn't possible and your brain has to rely entirely on one data point to determine edges. With a green background, your brain is trying to find areas where your green receptors are not being triggered in a sea of receptors being triggered. It's like trying to find someone not wearing a hat in a crowd of people wearing hats. So the result ends up a bit muddy and indistinct. OTOH with green text on a black background, the only data your brain is getting are the lines of text, so it can concentrate on interpreting that.

      (You do notice the loss of resolution going from white with subpixel rendering [grc.com], to just green. So a high-res display is mandatory.)
      • ... back to my first physical terminal, phosphor green on black, which is also the current setting for cmd.exe on my employer's laptop.
      • The problem is that in any room with a window, you're not going to have consistent ambient lighting. Half of the problem I have with light themes is if I open something up at night, suddenly my eyes are assaulted by a giant light bulb, whereas during the day the brightness level is perfect.

        Adaptive brightness is the obvious solution to this, but any time you accidentally move a few inches in front of the sensor, your screen brightness changes perceptibly, which is just annoying. It'd be perfect if rather
      • There's one more thing, countering the sub pixel aspect, and that's the pentile configuration of most OLED screens. Only green really has the full resolution in those cases. Plus, light text on dark background actually saves battery power.
  • Almost anytime one is thinking about having a "dark mode", the better solution is to have "themes" - let the user have it whatever way they want.
    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      Totally this. Of course this only applies if you're not using MacOS, Windows, or Gnome. All of those seem to think they know best about how everything should look. I know you can do themes in Gnome, but let's be honest, they are really designing it for their default theme and they really want to get rid of theme support (for many reasons, some philosophical, some technical). Dark Mode seems to be a crutch for OS's and desktops that don't have proper theme support.

    • Indeed, in emacs I use a fairly dark theme, because there are lots of colors and it works better.

      For other text I want a light theme.

  • Whatever the mode, I find it more hard on my eyes to read text that has low contrast, which is pretty much the style everyone uses these days. For sites I frequent, including this one, I've created custom styles to blacken the text. Makes a huge difference to readability. That and lowering the blues in the evening makes reading a computer screen a whole lot more comfortable to me.

    On Linux desktops I've always wondered why we need a special dark mode and dark mode support in apps. Isn't that what themes ar

  • For the eyes it is better if there are no big differences in the lighting of different areas, because the eyes can only adjust to an average. Therefore a dark background on sunny day is not a good idea. The dark mode could have a place - if you were working in dark. But if you work in dark, than you should fix your lighting first of all. After all a display is a lighting itself directly in your face, even if you turn it down to the minimum.
  • It really does not matter except that no one likes "low contrast mode" and anyone who designs something that displays in "low contrast mode" should be taken out behind the barn and castrated with rusty pinking shears! No need to shoot them, they will bleed out anyway, with any luck, and they will never make the "low contrast mode" decision ever again. Eventually all the "low contrast mode" fuckers will be killed off and the gene pool cleansed of this aberration.

  • Dark, because light attracts bugs.
  • by joh ( 27088 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @04:51PM (#59733940)

    In a dark room staring at a bright screen with dark text is totally exhausting because you're basically staring into a lamp. In a bright (daylight) room staring into a dark screen is exhausting because you're looking into a black hole and every time you look elsewhere your eyes have to adjust to the bright walls and windows etc. and have to adjust back to the dark screen.

    I think if the screen is the only light around (because you're working at night and with little light around) use dark mode. If you're working in daylight or in a brightly lit (office) room, use light mode. In fact this has always been the rule for average screen brightness: Adjust your screen to be as bright as a sheet of paper is in the same position. This is the only way to keep your eyes comfortable. As soon as your screen is either much brighter or much darker than everything around it you will suffer.

    And this is basically the reason for certain people preferring dark mode: They typically are night people, working in dark rooms with the screen being the only (or nearly the only) light source. In this case dark mode is infinitely better.

    • FWIW I don't have much control over my environmental lighting in the real world. My company basically built a greenhouse with an open office plan. (open office = no offices)

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I like dark mode in a well lit room. I use blue light cut lenses too.

      The best dark modes uses a slightly grey background and off white text to reduce contrast too. In fact I turn down the contrast on my work monitor.

      Basically fatigue is the biggest issue by far, and I don't find readability to be an issue.

    • In a dark room staring at a bright screen with dark text is totally exhausting

      That's why screen brightness exists.

      I don't find it exhausting AT ALL to start at black text on a white background, in a pitch dark room. I've read for several hours at a time that way. Whereas any attempt to read light text on a dark background makes my eyes hurt in short order.

      Do not generalize your reaction to different reading environments to all humans.

      They typically are night people, working in dark rooms with the screen be

      • by DasArk ( 6294344 )
        I do switch exactly as mentioned above - white background during day, black or dark gray background during night. Even during night I use small light source behind the display to dim the amount of light emitted by monitor itself.
    • This is exactly why I use both light and dark modes. At work I use light, in the brighter office environment, and at home at night I prefer dark modes. Dark mode at night is much more relaxing than just dimming the screen brightness.
    • Sitting in a dark room has problems of its own. It makes your body clock think it's night, so you'll get sleepy. This leads to drinking lots of coffee/coke/other cafeinated beverage to stay awake, which screws up your body more and leads to decreased sleep quality. Which leads to the question whether working at night is just a preference, or a symptom of a body whose day/night rhythm has been screwed with too often.

  • One detail is missing in the article - The period length over which the tests were taken. From my experience, it takes some days getting used to Dark mode.

    Anyway, I love my dark UI and I've no intention of switching back even if it'll make me 5% more efficient.

  • Dark mode came from "Pro" apps - apps designed for photography, retouching, video editing, media creation etc. These apps are generally used in environments with controlled lighting - and particularly with the case for photo retouching and video editing, often simply lit rooms with dark walls so there's not much coloured lights in the environment changing your perception of the colour on screen.
    In a dimly lit, or completely dark, edit suite, light mode is like looking into the sun. It's these kinds of envir

    • by chrylis ( 262281 )

      Interestingly, photography applications don't use "dark mode". Instead, they use a neutral medium gray that's intended to provide the best acuity for contrast in the image that's being worked on.

  • It is trivial to make the font size bigger. If you are really counting on every available pixel, I suppose stick with light mode, but personally I'll just hit Ctrl+ and consider it a solved concern.

    Things I actually care about:
    * Drain on the battery if I am using a portable device
    * How bright the screen is in the evenings when it will affect my sleep cycle
    * Color contrast. I want to have high-contrast and be able to find windows, notice error output, identify color-coded syntax in my IDE, etc. with ease.

    • I use desktop interface for slashdot on my phone because mobile mode sucks rocks. But when I increase the font size and look at my list of recent comments I can't see the scores, only the number of replies, because of the worthless boxes at the right side of the page.

      Increasing font size is often good, but when incompetent monkeys do the HTML, it can cause problems.

      • Wow, I just noticed you can actually close all of those now. Still would be nice if they just wouldn't cover up content though

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        I use the stylus addon in Firefox to get rid of all that stuff. And there's also a click to reflow add-on that makes the Slashdot desktop site on firefox android totally usable. Zoom in to set the size, then click to reflow the text I'm reading. Works way better than Slashdot's mobile view.

      • But when I increase the font size and look at my list of recent comments I can't see the scores, only the number of replies, because of the worthless boxes at the right side of the page.
        My box on the right side with comments/awnseres/scores vanished about half a year ago, and I can not figure how to activate it again. Do you have a hint?

  • Why does it have to be only two choices? Can't we go back to the day when pretty much everything was customizable in the Xresources file.
    • Can't we go back to the day when pretty much everything was customizable in the Xresources file.

      I'm sure we will - the moment the Year of the Linux Desktop arrives.

    • Black and White is the highest contrast we can have; that is why it's the best and the only option is which is the dominant one. High contrast in text; especially smaller text, is best. anti-aliasing is for lower resolution to reduce the jagged edges which draw extra attention due to our visual system's high bias towards detecting contrasts/edges. Furthermore, that bias extends into black and white optical illusions.

      The strongly detected colors tend to be weighted somewhat evenly and when placed against e

      • Black and White is the highest contrast we can have

        Are you sure of that?

        Seems to me that activating a single type of cone in your eye might be "more contrast" than activating 3 different types of them. Cones arent pixels.

    • Can't we go back to the day when pretty much everything was customizable in the Xresources file.

      emacs*Background: DarkSlateGray
      emacs*Foreground: Wheat
      emacs*pointerColor: Orchid
      emacs*cursorColor: Orchid
      emacs*bitmapIcon: on
      emacs*font: fixed
      emacs*globalFontLockMode: on

  • by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @05:37PM (#59734046) Journal

    For me, dark mode is more about having more color contrast. I can identify more colors against the dark background, which is useful in IDEs or design software.

  • I love dark themes/modes myself but when all the window chrome is dark, I would like the window drop-shadow to be more of an under-glow because the shadow can't really be seen... as a result, I sometimes find it hard to spot the title bar of a window in order to raise it/move it.

    Of note, the Twitter web interface supports a dark mode and it then switches from drop-shadow to glow instead. It works well IMHO.
  • As you grow older... (Score:4, Informative)

    by m.dillon ( 147925 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @05:43PM (#59734058) Homepage

    You will wish you had used dark mode your whole life, instead of starting just last week :-). Truthfully, though, white backgrounds push a lot of light directly into your eyes and face, and having sat in front of CRTs ever since I was around 12 years old, I learned fairly quickly that I could pull much longer stints in front of displays that weren't blaring bright white pixels at me (well, bright green pixels way back then) 24x7.

    I thank that insight now that I'm over 50.

    My personal preference... a dark (but not black) background with modest (but not excessive) contrast and minimal bleeding:

    xterm*background: #100010000000
    xterm*foreground: #7FFFDFFFDFFF

    -Matt

    • I'm also over 50 and am glad I've used white backgrounds to read text on computers my whole life.

      I don't need or use vision correction and think that if your eyes do not get some kind of workout at times, that is how degeneration begins (or at least hastens it). They are a muscle after all.

      So when you are making things easier on your eyes, perhaps you are not doing yourself any favors.

      But really why would a white background even be harder on your eyes? Mechanically speaking a dark background with white te

      • Focus is easier too: in bright situations, the pupil contracts. If youâ(TM)ve ever played around with pin-hole cameras, the. youâ(TM)ll have seen a really good example of this. Donâ(TM)t make your eyes fight for focus.

    • You wouldn't be the matt dillon behind DragonFlyBSD, would you?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wish Slashdot had a dark mode. There are extensions that can do it but they all seem to have terrible performance penalties.

      I read that some browser vendor was looking at building it in, but can't remember if it was Firefox or Chrome.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I turn my LED monitor's brightness down as low as I can. This paper [nih.gov] used to have the full text (I can only find the abstract now) that concerned me.
  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:35PM (#59734164)

    Because my Python code just looks weird with all that dark space.

  • Since when looking for small objects moving against a background they use light mode. (Background is white and objects like stars and asteroids appear black.)
  • For oled and microled, which are winning the latest two iterations of display tech wars, dark mode saves energy and may even prolong the lifetime of the display as way less pixels on average are powered.

    For ok boomers it's not only cataract but especially floaters that cause a bright background to be tiring. The floaters are much more noticeable on a bright background, and since they follow the eye saccades with a dampened delay they interfere with reading.

  • Sure, you did a study or something, but what about the fact that I know this guy, and he prefers dark mode?

    Surely your entire study is wrong.

  • I like dark mode overall because it's more restful, easier on the eyes. Reading books on the Kindle app is so much easier with white text. But I want it to be selectable by app. Apple Maps, especially, is unreadable in dark mode. All you see are the ghostly outlines of streets with no detail visible.

  • I will never use a product that doesn't have dark mode, or could not be modified to be in dark mode.

  • Some 3 or more decades ago, I read about a study that compared black text against a white background, white text against a black background, and (because then it was more common than the other two) green text against a black background. For accurate proofreading, black text against a white background was found to be superior over the other two. However, the most accurate proofreading occurred with black text on white hard-copy paper.

    Even today, I still find that I must reread on hard-copy what I write on

  • Most sites and apps do their light and dark modes wrong, that's why they are both hard to read, and only one harder than the other.

    The most common mistake is to aim for maximum contrast, and that derives into having full light and full darkness (or almost full, like the rgb(54,54,54) slashdot contrast vs a white background. These extremes are what they hurt they eyes and makes us tired. If we had better care we would choose off-white backgrounds like most paper books, and some gray that has just enough con

  • by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @11:40PM (#59734594)

    The MAIN reason green & amber displays in the 1980s used green or amber content on black was due to using high-persistence phosphors that were vulnerable to burn-in AND smeared badly when scrolling. If you cranked up the brightness, the half-life of a green (or esp. amber) monitor would have been maybe 6-15 months before it was a burned-in mess.

    With computers like Amiga arrived, where the normal desktop mode was 640x200, black-on-white looked *awful*, because every other scanline was black anyway. The biggest change
    I remember after getting a FlickerFixer card (so I could use 640x400 without going blind) was that for the first time, solid-white backgrounds looked *good*. Amiga's original color palette (black, white, dark low-saturation blue, and medium high-saturation orange) was awful in theory, but IMHO was easier to read at 640x200 than its later black-gray-white-blue 2.0 palette was, though the 2.0 palette definitely looked nicer for 640x400.

    That said, for programming/IDE use, I prefer dark schemes because the syntax highlighting stands out more. But for "normal" stuff, I prefer light themes. On my phone, I tend to go dark because I'm afraid of OLED burn-in, even though I'd *prefer* a light theme.

  • For me it depends on the amount of ambient light. One could argue I should arrange for “perfect” light at all times but I enjoy more light in the morning and sitting in a dark room in the late afternoon/evening.

  • I have various apps exitedly tell me that they now do dark mode. I try it and turn it off.

    I always assumed that this is because I am not cool. It turns out that, while that may be so, I am also normal.

    I will continue trying these offerings from time to time but I have not found dark mode useful yet.

  • Funny all the preferences here. But there is also some cold hard science: A white background with black letters will be brighter than dark mode. Brighter means your pupils contract to compensate for the bright image. When a pupil contracts the depth-of-field of your eye increases allowing your eyes to strain less while focussing. This is simple and irrefutable scientific fact. You might have another preference and that is OK. But in the end a light mode is easier on the eyes.
  • 5 years back it wouldn't have mattered very much to me. I preferred darker themed apps as they seemed easier on my eyes, but as to which was better was a matter of preference and how it was implemented in the website/app. Then after my eyes aged another year I began to get floaters and others who have or had them get most likely relate that they can be very annoying and distracting on light backgrounds. Most cases your brain gets used to them and as time goes by they become less annoying (it took a good tw
  • Instead of bothering with all this light mode/dark mode nonsense, I have a team of attractive and underdressed assistants describe the content of the screen to me while I busy myself with ogling their anatomy. Far easier on the eyes.
  • I hate my Phone provider's start up mode.
    It shines a super bright white screen with the 3 logo. Positively blinding if I have to restart my Samsung S9 with it's AMOLED screen at night.

    Give me a black mode every time, for every App...

  • Just give the user options between both. People with different eye colors have varying levels of light sensitivity and it's less about readability and more about eye strain.

    I have very light blue eyes and white backgrounds on websites put a strain on my eyes. I'll be moving over to Arstechnica now to take a load off.
  • Generally I prefer Light Mode, even at night. The exception is when I'm involved in an activity such as driving where the screen is a secondary tool, such as using Google Maps for directions. Light Mode at night in such a situation would mean that the eyes have to adjust back and forth, making it harder to see outside after a quick glance at the screen; Dark Mode alleviates that issue since the lower environmental contrast lets one gather the information without having to adjust back and forth.

    I suspect

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