I agree that dark mode as an additional UI shouldn't be an afterthought, and should be tested fully just like the main UI. Poorly-designed dark mode can be difficult to use because of things like bad contrast.
Dark mode usually has lower contrast ratio (gray-on-gray text instead of black-on-white), and that's definitely proven to be harder to read.
The beyond-frustrating thing for me is that Windows 3.1 supported dark mode via system color palettes along with any other color customization anyone wanted to make to their entire system in a single place. Now every single application is custom-drawn and custom-themed, so these sorts of customizations are impossible.
This all worked better literally 30 years ago.
Also even light mode is often gray on gray, with backgrounds like #eee and text like #112 for example. The contrast is probably lower on average for dark mode, but it can still be designed well.
I don't understand this. Do people not use lamp or light source in their house? Are people living like cavemen? Otherwise, how is it that much difference between day and night+lamp?
If it is sleep time, there is already blue light filter most OS supports nowadays. No need to ask each app to support a separate color scheme.
Besides, you don't stare straight at your lamps. You do stare straight at your screen. The "night mode" just kills all color on your devices. It's a lot worse option than dark mode.
My takeaway from this post is very different. Minimum work, or even modest work, and the users should be so lucky they get to even use the thing.
The trend is already to dumb things down with flat design, tons of stuff not all that discoverable, and on and on I could go.
Perhaps usability has peaked, and now posts like this are the rule of the day?
Sure hope not, but I do harbor doubts.
Put the work in. It's the users who make your efforts go. Nobody else does.
That you personally do not agree is a separate matter.
As you age, and I am guessing you are in your first few decades of life, remember this moment when you find yourself preferring dark mode and more able to articulate it yourself.
Probably, but the change can't stop. Must keep on innovating with useless side-grades or even downgrades.
Wish it were different.
I miss supremely crafted interfaces. Pro users can move as if thought itself is action. Sure glad I got to experience a handful of them, each a mini career piece of software.
Forget about physiologically measurable eyestrain for a second. NOT staring at a super bright white light is more comfortable and less jarring in many (arguably nearly all) use cases. Anecdotal for sure, but across friends and family that span dozens of demographics I've never shown dark mode to someone where they then had a bad reaction - all of them found it interesting, if not downright soothing compared to dark mode, and most of them continued using it in the future and even trying to find dark mode on other sites they use.
Less subjectively, it really isn't hard to make a dark mode interface and complaining about having to do so is wild. Skill issue.
Simply going outside should be brighter than your monitor. We're pretty much evolved to hunt (and thus see best) during the daytime. I'm convinced a lot of the reasons people hate light themes is because their monitors and/or color temperature are too bright compared to ambient light.
Like the author says, if the screen is too bright for you, lower the brightness, or use night light mode. You can change your environment. You can't change how your eyes/brain function.
I don't want to force you to use dark mode, by all means continue viewing your world with dark text on bright backgrounds and let us view things the way that we prefer them.
And often followed by sorry, (not sorry)
However, one case where it might help is that a program does need to specify some of its own colours, in addition to the standard ones (unless the program already allows customizing its colours; some programs will already do this, which might be helpful anyways, in case of e.g. colour blindness, or a monochrome display, etc). In this case, dark mode might be helpful for the program to know which colours it should use for its additional colours.
If you want to be able to automatically set the colours by time of day or by other criteria (e.g. which display it is connected to, or whether or not the output will be diverted to a printer), then a separate program could be used, to configure the system by such things.
If you have a HDR capable screen that even in 'normal' circumstances hovers at a base brigthness of about 500-600 nits, Dark Mode is an absolute necessity.
Besides, it makes actual content on screen just pop so much more when it's not fighting with the sun that is your white background.
Also it prolongs the life of fragile oled screens further as the subpixels don't require as much energy to shine.
And before somebody asks, my OS is set to dark mode because the light mode UI is unusable.
I can't wait for the fad to pass.
I use darkreader a lot, but for some sites it's not so good. If a site has a decent dark mode, or takes a lot of config to get working, I'll disable darkreader for the site.
Anyway, low effort opinion article.
Coming up to 44 and not there yet. At what age do you reckon it kicks in?
This is less of a problem in apps and the web, but in email it is absolutely horrendous. But then again, the entire email styling thing is still in the dark ages.
And you're completely right about email. Seems like many email clients force email content into dark mode, even images and it's such a pain to handle.
What, how is it doubling required work? There is so much to do when it comes to interface design than just colors. With a proper logic behind coloring, and a token system, its not that big of a deal. Many people prefer dark mode.
Also, changing brightness on an external screen twice a day would be quite tedious... imagine with multiple screens.
Themeing is hard. And he is rightly bitching about all the apps that slap on dark mode at the end and leave all kinds of visual bugs in place.
Nothing about UI/UX work, no matter what platform or framework, is trivial. It takes a gruelling amount of work and time, that's why most modern UIs suck hard. People don't have the time, money or skills to do it.
But agreed, it's nowhere near double the work.
It is not dark mode that was added, but the light one. Dark mode is OG.
[0] chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark
All it takes is for someone to be forced to work at night one time to appreciate dark mode (e.g. being on-call).
I believe Dark Mode is beneficial in certain situations. For a privacy enhancement or to reduce distractions. To evoke a retro or gaming aesthetic.
A long time ago, I fell in love with "paper white" type color schemes, as they were known, and it just felt like a more pleasant experience than the CRT amber/green terminals. Now I'm more adaptable; I don't mind when Battery Saver mode kicks in.
It just doesn't work like that, even the lowest setting can be a blast to the eyes if the background is pure white. I have grown especially fond of dark mode due to getting woken up in the middle of the night due to on-call for work. A low brightness setting either makes things too hard to read or is still overly bright.
