Dark mode is not as good for your eyes as you believe

I developed eye floaters in one of my eyes and that made Light Mode almost unbearable to use. Some people might not like Dark Mode, but it's also an accessibility feature that helps not only people with certain common eye conditions, but others like migraine sufferers.

Surely this isn't a highly subjective topic that is going to result in people hugely advocating for one or the other purely based on their own anecdotes. Right?

Putting the sarcasm aside, my personal experience with dark mode is that I do find it more pleasant in general to work with. However, in a lot of cases it does make reading text more difficult which mostly seems to come down to the wrong contrast ratios being used between the text and background.

Which brings me on a bit of a tangent, I feel like the web in general has gotten less readable. But this is more to do with font choices, line length and a whole host of other things independent of the dark/light mode.

Dark mode is good in the sense that I love it.

Using light mode apps, especially in the evening, is like a laser into my eyes, subjectively.

Dark mode has basically become unusable for me as I've aged and my vision has gotten worse due to uncorrectable/partially correctable astigmatism. Black text on white-ish backgrounds is far more readable, whereas white text on black background makes each character act like its own little point light and cause all kinds of eye strain

Dark mode, light mode ... Just switch on the light in the room and stop looking into light source while sitting in the dark. That's why your eyes hurt, when your irises need to constantly expand and contract. Dark mode is reducing amount of light coming through but does not solve the root cause of no background light.

Am I the only one that uses light mode at day and dark mode at night? I see this topic light vs dark so often and wonder why nobody mentions that approach..

I have a shortcut in my vim which just toggles my light/dark themes and I use it regularly.

„which swaps the standard white background for black“

I tried, but I just can’t believe anything written after that statement. The default was white (or green or orange) on black.

All these white backgrounds are fairly new - probably there are more years with white than black backgrounds, but that’s not how my old brain think of time.

Screens that put out light, I can't handle light mode. On OLED at least, dark mode means the only light entering my eyes is what I'm trying to see. I read a lot. Heaven help you if your "dark mode" is gray background, chaotic evil. I don't really mind any mode on LCD displays, I just generally dislike LCD displays.

You know what I would love, a high refresh rate, high resolution color e-ink or similar. You couldn't sit in the dark to use it, but it would probably be ideal for everything except watching video.

Dark modes aren't made equal. Some have proper contrast and are generally easier to look at than light modes even in proper background lighting (especially when the light version overuses various shades of gray), some are rather painful to use - and I'm not even speaking about aesthetics.

There are apps and websites where dark mode is a massive win, but when coding with colored syntax, you won't beat light background both on- and off-screen (doesn't mean I don't sometimes end up coding in a dark room using a dark terminal anyway :P)

Personally I suffer eye strain without dark mode, but dark does not means black, I tend to use dark grey colors without too much contrast.

The only app I use in dark mode is Visual Studio Code. I've tried using dark mode across all apps, but I never got used to it.

I use Mixed Mode: white on black for terminals and code editors, black on white for everything else. What I notice is that white backgrounds start to be a problem when ambient light is low, towards evening. I compensate by dimming the screen. Another thing that I notice is that small text is more difficult to read on black backgrounds.

My understanding on this is that you need to combine dark mode with something that cuts blue light to reduce eye strain.

I've been experimenting with "red mode" for reading at night, I.e. filtering all colors except red and black. Works really well especially with an OLED screen.

I don't understand how something that is pleasing to the eye can be bad for it. Dark mode seems to give me less eyestrain. Websites have so much white space that white mode makes my eyes fatigued faster. Just bright LED light.

I always had problems with dark mode and daylight. Also the dark mode is often not very good designed. Lack of contrast is often the case. Apple does a very good Job but others not (i.e. dark design in vs code or win 11)

I always thought dark mode was good in dark surroundings and light mode was good in light surroundings.

If light mode feels blinding in light surroundings, turn your brightness down. Your screen has this setting.

(2019)

has there been claims that dark mode are easier on your eyes in any context? I always assumed it to be the case only for low environmental light situations: watching entertainment or coding.

other than this benefit, I use dark mode to save on battery in OLED displays

Paywall

> The iPhone X was the first Apple phone to launch with an OLED screen.

Funny they almost write this like Apple was pioneering this. The iPhone X was released 8 years after the Samsung Galaxy S, which was the first OLED smartphone.