It's not even about preferences for me. I can spend all day in light mode without eyestrain, without issue, very comfortably.
If I encounter a page that's dark mode (GUI), after about a minute or so, I start seeing spots before my eyes that stay with me for quite a while.
To wit... I use these two firefox extensions to convert pages from Dark Mode to Light mode. If one fails, the other usually finds success (I think they work in reverse too):
side note: I cannot explain why the terminal (FG/White; BG/Black) feels incredibly comfortable to my eyes. Maybe it's the larger font I use (80 columns = ~2/3rds of my 16" screen width), the right amount of contrast, the fixed spacing...?
I optimize for maximum amount of natural sunlight hitting my retina throughout the day, as that tends to have positive effects on my psychological wellbeing.
So I've set up my desk at a 45° angle bridging a corner of my office where I have windows along one of the walls (with me looking at the corner, of course, not into the room).
So, I'm as close to the windows as possible and have a wall of windows with natural light hitting my eyes from a 45° angle. This is important on overcast days which, where I live, is most of them because otherwise, I would get barely any natural light at all.
With dark mode, this setup runs into trouble on sunny days because sunny spots in the room tend to reflect off the screen, producing glare. This leads me to start drawing blinds and almost always spirals into me sitting in a dark room on the sunniest of days when I most want to enjoy the sun.
With light mode, I can get away with regulating the light through a movable paravent that moves with the sun and takes care of the worst of sunny spots reflecting off my screen and maybe drawing the blinds only partially.
To be fair, both dark mode and light mode are bad. For me, optimal is with some dark grey background that mixes well with the surroundings around the screen. The point is, not to have contrast with surroundings. Kindle, or the text consoles on older CRT monitors looked good because they were not too bright against the surroundings.
And the content on the screen felt like real-world tangible object.
Having said that, I feel that dark mode (full dark) is a product of "new is exciting", "game theme", "dark means serious, mystery, suspense", "no glaring", "linux/console style, so geek", "we are coders, so different from normal people" etc
The reality is, full dark theme requires more brightness and more power consumption. It feels like searching for things in a dark room without light (mystery, suspense factor). Light theme can feel more relaxed, with lower brightness settings.
The theory is cool, but the ending is the practical part - there are system APIs to tell you which one the user prefers, so you can just make users happy and provide both options.
After several lifetimes of intentionally exposing myself to black/colored text on white, I switched to dark mode last week and haven't looked back.
With such an extensive time study, highly unlikely to be usurped any time soon, and the result being quite the opposite of what I set out to prove, we can all safely put this debate to rest.
A contributing factor is my keratoconus has had some kind of remission. Which is a good thing. At one point I had so many focal points in both eyes, without corrective lenses and before surgery, more than a dozen overlapping versions of text produced unreadable spaghetti. Unless it was a very tiny font from a distance, and then the glyphs only partially occluded each other, and I could I decode them.
Looking at one of those small bright electronics power LED dots across a dark room, I could see all my focal points in each eye, and focal webs meandering between them.
So I feel quite privileged to be able to use dark mode with unaided eyes now.
The fundamental mechanism seems to be that light mode causes pupils to contract by exposing the eye to more light. This decreases spherical aberration and increases depth of field just as using as smaller aperture on a camera lens does.
Staring into a light source that contrasts enough with the ambient light to contract my pupils is uncomfortable. I don't want to do that even if it makes me read faster.
Light mode for me. Dark is just weird, IMO. I don't get more eye strain from light like so many other people do. I also don't wear sunglasses when outside, ever. Maybe I've got strong eyes.
Funny enough, I use HN as a gentler flashlight when I enter my bedroom after my spouse is asleep as it’s one of the few sites/apps that doesn’t have a dark mode.
light mode as the article points out for people with no vision impairment. And the trend towards dark mode in some applications as the default setting is bad.
When people talk about light mode blinding them, please do yourself a favour and do not live like a goblin. Work in a well lit room and calibrate your monitor, your eyes should not be hurting looking at bright colors.
Letting the use choose is the right answer. I’d go as far as to argue that in some sense, theming is an important accessibility feature because it allows users to adjust UI to meet needs that the developer may not have even known to exist.
If I encounter a page that's dark mode (GUI), after about a minute or so, I start seeing spots before my eyes that stay with me for quite a while.
To wit... I use these two firefox extensions to convert pages from Dark Mode to Light mode. If one fails, the other usually finds success (I think they work in reverse too):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/site-color-ch...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/no-color/
side note: I cannot explain why the terminal (FG/White; BG/Black) feels incredibly comfortable to my eyes. Maybe it's the larger font I use (80 columns = ~2/3rds of my 16" screen width), the right amount of contrast, the fixed spacing...?
Edit: I underwent LASIK eye surgery, and I don't recall experiencing headaches beforehand. Or maybe, just getting old?
So I've set up my desk at a 45° angle bridging a corner of my office where I have windows along one of the walls (with me looking at the corner, of course, not into the room).
So, I'm as close to the windows as possible and have a wall of windows with natural light hitting my eyes from a 45° angle. This is important on overcast days which, where I live, is most of them because otherwise, I would get barely any natural light at all.
With dark mode, this setup runs into trouble on sunny days because sunny spots in the room tend to reflect off the screen, producing glare. This leads me to start drawing blinds and almost always spirals into me sitting in a dark room on the sunniest of days when I most want to enjoy the sun.
With light mode, I can get away with regulating the light through a movable paravent that moves with the sun and takes care of the worst of sunny spots reflecting off my screen and maybe drawing the blinds only partially.
And the content on the screen felt like real-world tangible object.
Having said that, I feel that dark mode (full dark) is a product of "new is exciting", "game theme", "dark means serious, mystery, suspense", "no glaring", "linux/console style, so geek", "we are coders, so different from normal people" etc
The reality is, full dark theme requires more brightness and more power consumption. It feels like searching for things in a dark room without light (mystery, suspense factor). Light theme can feel more relaxed, with lower brightness settings.
With such an extensive time study, highly unlikely to be usurped any time soon, and the result being quite the opposite of what I set out to prove, we can all safely put this debate to rest.
A contributing factor is my keratoconus has had some kind of remission. Which is a good thing. At one point I had so many focal points in both eyes, without corrective lenses and before surgery, more than a dozen overlapping versions of text produced unreadable spaghetti. Unless it was a very tiny font from a distance, and then the glyphs only partially occluded each other, and I could I decode them.
Looking at one of those small bright electronics power LED dots across a dark room, I could see all my focal points in each eye, and focal webs meandering between them.
So I feel quite privileged to be able to use dark mode with unaided eyes now.
Staring into a light source that contrasts enough with the ambient light to contract my pupils is uncomfortable. I don't want to do that even if it makes me read faster.
my type of astigmatism prefers light mode, not to say that light mode is perfect
we are all different. this is what accessibility means.
Dark mode at high brightness and light mode at any brightness on LED screens both give me migraines.
That said, light mode on non-emissive (e-ink, actual paper) is find.
night → dark mode with high brightness ⇒ less eye strain
When people talk about light mode blinding them, please do yourself a favour and do not live like a goblin. Work in a well lit room and calibrate your monitor, your eyes should not be hurting looking at bright colors.
Seriously, the best UIs let users adjust things to their preferences instead of forcing one or two-polar-opposite choices.