Please don't force dark mode

Dark mode was the traditional normal.<p>From early green or amber text on black mono displays. Grey on black DOS text mode. Light Blue on Dark Blue C-64. Apple 2&#x27;s grey&#x2F;white (I don&#x27;t recall) on black. Even GUI wise, Amiga used a dark-blue background as the default Workbench, with user selectable palettes for everything.<p>It was Microsoft Windows that changed the paradigm to default to a searing white display with black text in most apps, like Notepad, Word, etc., because &quot;it&#x27;s more like paper&quot;. Sure, paper is white, but it&#x27;s not glowing white. That transition was painful.<p>I&#x27;m glad to see dark-modes return, I agree there needs to be an option, not just forced dark-mode. Preferably light mode options to use a not-as-bright-as-possible white too.

Well hang on a sec. If a website is dark with light text and has just that one style, then that&#x27;s it&#x27;s theme, it&#x27;s vibe. Dark mode only exists if there is a light mode, and give versa.<p>Don&#x27;t force having to maintain two modes on websites who don&#x27;t want to?

I agree with this. Default, unconfigurable light mode has been around for a while, and infrastructure like the Dark Reader plugin is around to address this. There is no such thing for light mode, though.<p>In my opinion, light mode is better than dark mode in most situations. The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when you&#x27;re sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only light source, and most of the time that&#x27;s not really a healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a light or go to sleep.<p>Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light environments. Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright summer&#x27;s day? Can&#x27;t read a thing, even with brightness cranked all the way up.

This particular blog doesn&#x27;t heed device settings and, as such, forces light mode on its readers.<p>The author also changes their mind halfway through and decides the problem is actually color contrast, not dark mode.

Please don&#x27;t force low contrast ratios on users. Not everyone is calibrated to &gt;100 nits and viewing your content in a bright but sensible ambient environment<p>The recommended grey-on-grey may be unreadably low in contrast when viewed on, for example, 0 brightness in a pitch black room, or in direct sunlight<p>The full SDR colour range is there to be used, this isn&#x27;t HDR where you need to limit things to not blind your users

Not just light vs. dark. I wish web sites would respect my system&#x27;s preferences in general. If my OS theme is purple Comic Sans text on top of a yellow brick wall background, then my browser should respect that. I want to read text using the full width of the browser rather than a tiny 5 inch column down the middle of it, I shouldn&#x27;t have to perform wizardry in the browser settings, conjure up some overriding CSS, or install extensions to do this. The browser should just say &quot;tough shit, web developer, the user&#x27;s preference wins.&quot;<p>Browsers have handed over way too much control to developers to ignore what the user wants. So much for being a &quot;user agent.&quot; Browsers are more like the developer&#x27;s agent.

Too many web developers assume everyone loves Dark Mode, default to that, and defend their choice by pointing to the toggle button that says Dark&#x2F;Light Mode. I’m surprised many, even with freshly done websites, still do not pick up on the user’s preferences and are set to it!<p>For developers, the `color-scheme` CSS property allows an element to indicate which color schemes it can comfortably be rendered in.[1]<p><pre><code> :root { color-scheme: light dark; } element { light-dark(light-color-code, dark-color-code); </code></pre> For users on macOS, I like dark mode in some cases, such as the Menubar and the IDE, but light for other activities, such as reading, writing, and browsing. Hence, it is a mixed preference;<p>System Preferences, then set the theme to LIGHT, then run<p><pre><code> defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool Yes </code></pre> Logout, then System Preferences, then set the theme to DARK.<p>Reset back to the default theme.<p><pre><code> defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool No </code></pre> 1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;color-scheme" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;color-schem...</a>

Funny because i find the blog&#x27;s example of &quot;readable text&quot; extremely hard to read. Because of the low contrast.<p>What kind of eye condition or monitor does he have?

There is a web API to figure out if the user is in dark mode. use it.<p><pre><code> @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { CSS Rules here... }</code></pre>

Dark mode was a mistake. Early LCDs were dim so everyone cranked up the whites to make up for it. Now LCDs have caught up and it burns a significant number of peoples eyes, so we increasingly have to support two modes. Apples comically ugly dark mode icons shows how hard this is to do well.<p>I think the ideal thing to do would be to move back to greys as the base color for computer interfaces, like we had when bright CRTs were the norm. This has the added advantage of allowing depth affordances in UI elements, which we should also bring back.

I&#x27;m glad this article included an example of what happens to their eyes when they read text in dark mode. I get the same afterimages and it&#x27;s incredibly disorienting when it happens and dark mode makes it way worse than normal. As an aside, does anyone know if that effect has a name?

Dark Reader turns dark mode sites light, if you want.<p>You can control the contrast ratio on dark mode websites with the &quot;brightness&quot; control on your monitor. It changes the emissivity of the pixels. Turning it down keeps black the same color and makes whites blacker. Monitors typically ship with the white level way too high for any real work (it looks good in the computer store though), and so you should probably always be turning this down.

Thanks for posting this, it&#x27;s an interesting perspective that I hadn&#x27;t considered before. Ideally, sites would respect user preferences such as prefers-color-scheme and prefers-reduced-motion. And, in fact, I just checked MDN and see there is prefers-contrast:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;@media&#x2F;prefers-contrast" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;@media&#x2F;pref...</a>

No, please do force dark mode. This will make the dark mode people think they have won. They will act accordingly. And then the pendulum will swing back, as the pendulum always does.<p>But the difference this time is that because the dark mode people are wrong, and always have been, and always will be, when the pendulum swings back, it will swing hard, for it will swing with the momentum of righteousness and truth, and the repercussions will ring through history.<p>Ask yourself: where will you be standing, when this happens?

Personally I prefer light mode, but when using dark theme, for example in the IDE or terminal, I always manually set white brightness to 255 (max). For example Putty and other apps, come with default theme 192 on black and that is unreadable. Double so if someone is sharing their screen. Dark mode is already harder on the eyes and harder to focus, and making it less contrast makes it even harder to read.<p>PS: unless you are adhering to a system default, you better include options for everyone, not just one demographic. For example after recent redesign ArsTechnica has created a selection of different modes. And while some people like darker mode, I&#x27;m happily using &quot;hyperlight&quot; because it is easier to read for me.

I actually prefer text as #fff and background as #000. Lower contrast just seems harder to read. I suppose it depends on brightness setting.<p>Also from an article in Nature. “Impact of text contrast polarity on the retinal activity in myopes and emmetropes using modified pattern ERG” 09 July 2023.<p>“Recently, reading standard black-on-white text was found to activate the retinal OFF pathway and induce choroidal thinning, which is associated with myopia onset. Contrarily, reading white-on-black text led to thicker choroids, being protective against myopia. Respective effects on retinal processing are yet unknown.”

I miss the days when interfaces didn&#x27;t have to be light white on white or dark black on black. When people thought about contrast and things looked interesting. Discord is my go-to example with this. Before the dark&#x2F;light craze, their sidebar had a dark background and the chat was a white background. It was great and provided contrast and delineation between different parts of the app. When they added &quot;dark mode&quot;, they changed it to be light gray and white, making everything worse. Luckily they added an option to bring back the previous theme, albeit buried in the accessibility section.<p>This whole &quot;dark mode&quot; thing only happened because Apple removed all color and affordances from their interface in iOS 7, and then Mac OS later. They set computer interface design back decades with that decision.<p>For people complaining about &quot;light mode&quot;, please just turn down your brightness. Your screen does not need to be at 10,000 nits when you are anywhere but in direct sunlight.

Instead of writing this shortsighted article, just do like those of us who are forced to endure light mode, and install Dark Reader(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;darkreader.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;darkreader.org</a>) that also does light mode.

I used to love dark mode when I was younger but now the bright white text on black background is murder on my eyes with astigmatism, it&#x27;s like driving at night.

Anthony Hobday [1] has some pre-defined color combinations on his website. Sharing, since I find it related.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anthonyhobday.com&#x2F;sideprojects&#x2F;containercolours&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anthonyhobday.com&#x2F;sideprojects&#x2F;containercolours&#x2F;</a>

I very rarely stumble across sites that genuinely force dark mode.. they usually respect &quot;prefers-color-scheme dark&quot; (as they should).

Seems like a fashion thing, but the Linux distribs I&#x27;ve recently checked out all defaulted to a dark mode. Fine for night but a pain to read normally :(

As long as were asking: Don&#x27;t set color, typeface, font size, link color, visited link color, margins, spacing, line height, etc. either

Contrast ratios don’t go away in light mode. The contrast ratio of black-on-white is the same as white-on-black.<p>Curious then what is the real driver of these issues? If accessibility teaches us anything, it’s that there’s certainly no one size fits all. But it’s gonna be hard to update the standards or make plugins&#x2F;tweaks successfully unless we get at the root of it.

Dear website designers,<p>Please don&#x27;t force light mode. Light mode is only reasonable on E-Ink displays, where white is only reflective and does not emit light.<p>&gt;Every time I finish a long article, I end up seeing horizontal stripes everywhere I look, like my eyes just won’t let it go.<p>I would seriously consider talking to your doctor about this. This seems abnormal.

It&#x27;s interesting how they don&#x27;t want forced dark mode yet they have no problem with forced light mode.

I think this is something browsers should enforce. Different people may have different preferences for what they consider comfortable contrast ratios, and the tool in the stack that directly serves the user, is the browser. And even if websites should consider proper design, browsers should also enforce user preferences, because badly designed websites will probably always exist.<p>I&#x27;d suggest browsers come out of the box with a decent contrast range that they will use to display text, but users should be able to modify those settings. In general, browsers should be a lot more willing to override bad webdesign ideas. They already block popups and blink tags; there&#x27;s plenty of other behaviour they simply shouldn&#x27;t tolerate from websites.

Wondering whether the author has some kind of odd medical condition, and how common his experience is. The after-image symptom he describes is decidedly peculiar.<p>I can&#x27;t say that I share his opinion. I find dark-mode preferable under pretty much all circumstances, and often find myself flinching when switching to a site with a fully white background.I also find it easier to read ebooks in dark mode when in full sunlight when reading on my tablet -- also the opposite of his preference. And I&#x27;m wondering whether perhaps he needs to turn down the brightness on his monitor.

I&#x27;ve never quite seen a stupid trend in web design take off like dark mode did. Maybe because it&#x27;s just the ultimate perfect bike shed; something so completely inane and pointless, yet superficially dramatic, that it can be given entire meetings and dev cycles and treated like something important, when it&#x27;s just 3 lines of CSS. It has become the very first thing anyone requests in a new application, and I have now seen countless entire sprints deficated to implementing it in different more complicated ways every time in each new app. Really bizarre.

I like the proposal to have gray background at least. Glaring white is too much. I like reading HN because background is not glaring. For my taste it could be even a bit darker but it is good enough.

How comes this isn&#x27;t obvious to someone they should just respect the OS&#x2F;browser settings and use the color scheme the user chose?<p>I prefer black on white (and dream of a eInk-only laptop and a perfectly lo-fi UI with no unnecessary elements&#x2F;decorations&#x2F;effects) because that feels more ADHD-friendly to me. Dark modes look cool and make sense when you work in the dark, as long as you set the text font color to grey rather than bright white&#x2F;green&#x2F;whatever. The user should choose, using a single system-wide switch.

It&#x27;s funny, the author says the high contrast hurts his eyes, but for many visually impaired users (myself included), light mode is like a blinding white light that&#x27;s very hard to look at while dark mode is very comfortable while still having high contrast.<p>IMO every website should have a native dark &amp; light mode theme. There is a browser extension, Dark Reader, which changes the CSS to force dark (or light) mode but it can be really hit or miss depending on how the site was coded.

We&#x27;ve again came to full circle, with so many posts damning &quot;no dark mode&quot; sites back then. Maybe there is enough audience now for a &quot;BrightReader&quot; browser extension?

&gt; pure white text on a pitch black background can strain my eyes and be very difficult to read. […] However, light gray text on a dark gray background is easy on my eyes.<p>For me it’s the opposite, I need maximum contrast. It’s a pity we can’t just have default text color on default background color, and everyone can adjust their browser to their preferred colors. While there is reader mode and plugins that try their best, they don’t work consistently, because HTML and CSS is such a mess.

It seems much easier for terminal and IDE apps to choose background colors to apply to sections of code when your app background is light; with a dark app background it seems harder to find pairs of text bg and fg colors that are clearly distinguishable and also distinguishable from the app background. That said, I&#x27;m the author of an app with this challenge so would love help&#x2F;suggestions on this front. (Is there any theoretical reason for it to be true?)

The only reason I have started to use `eww` in Emacs to &quot;read the web&quot; is because people pushing those amounts of dark on everybody, it has become unbearable!

I&#x27;m more extreme, I dislike all dark mode, including code. Shreds my eyes, no idea why. Have tried a zillion themes, just can&#x27;t be one of the cool kids.

Funny I have just the opposite problem. And so I use a dark reader add-on in Firefox to force light sites, and curse any app that only provides a light theme.

&quot;iMessage&quot; has dark mode. Anytime I send a picture it shows up in reverse when in dark mode.<p>I don&#x27;t really care what other people prefer, software manufacturers with any more than a few users need to test all permutations. This is a minor annoyance but gives a clear indication that there isn&#x27;t good testing even with one of the most used apps with a huge user base.

If the contrast ratio is a problem for your eyes, just turn down the contrast on your screen.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are filters to do that on both desktop and mobile.

What really annoys is web-sites that force dark mode without an option to switch to light mode. There MUST be an obvious switch option when a web-site forces or offers dark mode—what matters is for a user to be able to change the mode. It&#x27;s simple common sense and respectful to users.

My optician recommended a yellow background, and I use FFFFF0.

I even more so would need a switch for anything on my screen, not just websites, including screen sharing. It&#x27;s fine for anyone having a preference, but I like light-mode and being in a well-lit environment for work, if not even outside. When then someone shares their screen in dark-mode I can read nothing.

For some reason, dark mode sites seem to come with monospaced fonts, usually Courier.<p>I suspect that the next thing will be HaloLite 2.0, where a ring of light appears around the screen.[1] There are TV backlights.[2] Backlights that follow the screen color.[3] There is at least one phone with backlights.[4]<p>Does anybody like that stuff?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;movingimage.org&#x2F;collection&#x2F;artifact-halolighttv&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;movingimage.org&#x2F;collection&#x2F;artifact-halolighttv&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inspiredled.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;universal-backlight-kits&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inspiredled.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;universal-backlight-kits...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;22566408&#x2F;govee-immersion-ambilight-tv-backlight-review" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;22566408&#x2F;govee-immersion-ambilight-...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.phonearena.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;Nothing-Phone-1-What-do-the-lights-on-the-back-do_id141348" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.phonearena.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;Nothing-Phone-1-What-do-the-...</a>

Please don&#x27;t force light mode either. :) My astigmatism means that I find dark mode on backlit screens to be <i>far</i> more readable. For proper accessibility, include both and respect the browser&#x2F;OS user preference accordingly. Allow the user to override that on a per-app basis if you&#x27;re feeling fancy.

If the contrast or brightness is too high, adjust your monitor.<p>Too many leave theirs at eye-searingly bright and then complain.

Graybeard opinion: most sites shouldn&#x27;t deal <i>at all</i> with colors. Just write plain html [0] and let your users choose. Default browser styles are not only stylish, they are also accessible and responsive by default.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherfuckingwebsite.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherfuckingwebsite.com&#x2F;</a>

Simplest thing is to have light and dark mode themes, use whatever the user has set for their system settings, and also have a toggle to switch between light and dark. You may like dark mode for most things you browse but then would prefer something in light mode.

I feel old, having black as the background is not &quot;Dark mode&quot;, it&#x27;s the default. In many cases I can understand the sentiment, but the default for background is no colour, I think for all hardware, that means not emitting anything

Please don&#x27;t force Light Mode on users. Thanks

Just created an account to say that I have that same eye condition and indeed, looking at content with high contrast ratios (mostly with whitish typography against dark backgrounds) gets REALLY uncomfortable after a couple minutes.

&gt; Upcoming WCAG 3.0 adds a new exploratory requirement for “Maximum text contrast” and I hope the working committee will address the issue of high contrast text in dark mode and provide suitable recommendations.<p>APCA is a proposed replacement contrast calculation that was in discussions for WCAG 3 that mentions a maximum contrast value to avoid eye strain like this (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myndex.com&#x2F;APCA&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myndex.com&#x2F;APCA&#x2F;</a>, I&#x27;m getting SSL errors right now though).<p>I wrote an accessible palette creator tool where you can switch between WCAG 2 and APCA contrast checking to see how they compare (go to &quot;... &gt; Flip to dark&#x2F;light palette&quot; to explore a dark mode palette):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inclusivecolors.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inclusivecolors.com&#x2F;</a><p>Along with not having a maximum recommended contrast, WCAG 2 is also meant to be really inaccurate at measuring dark mode contrast, where it&#x27;ll say colors contrast well when they don&#x27;t. APCA is meant to fix both these problems.

I hope Spotify UX teams reached this.

Let people do the f they want and be creative.<p>I am free to ignore these websites if I don&#x27;t find them easy to read, I can use reader mode, modify their css or disable css altogether if I am not happy, as everyone else.

The solution – as always – when it comes to problems with usability is to set your browser to open all websites in Reader view by default. Then every website will always be presented in the way you prefer.

&gt; I regularly see many websites including personal blogs that are designed exclusively in dark mode.<p>I feel the opposite, this actually seems quite rare.<p>Almost any blog should work fine in reader mode as well.

Can’t all of these things be said about light mode too? I find dark mode considerably better and would rather all sites offered a choice, especially the author’s!

Dark mode is such a dumb trend and I&#x27;m waiting patiently for it to die. It&#x27;s not easier on the eyes unless you&#x27;re in a dark room with no windows.

Can someone share a guide or how to for detecting the device’s preference and honouring that? That sounds optimal.

I saw the first two images and was instantly relieved that I&#x27;m not the only one experiencing this.

I prefer light mode for most things, but use dark mode anyway to save battery on an OLED Screen :)

the real problem is that I use a Eink display sometimes but many websites are disasters on it, e.g. HN.. I have to use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.svelte.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.svelte.dev&#x2F;</a> instead.<p>pls at least provide a switch...

It&#x27;s worse than that please don&#x27;t force dark mode even if my system has dark mode enabled.<p>I don&#x27;t want the primary background color of my computer to be dark as I&#x27;m browsing the web but I want only the periphery control items like the browser address bar, etc. to be dark.<p>I have the Dark Reader extension to dim white backgrounds only at night.

If you want a Professional White Background™ then that&#x27;s what Reader Mode is for.

Please I am begging you to force dark mode, or ask me up front which I prefer.

Wasn&#x27;t the idea that it is more energy-friendly?<p>(In which case, please also stop all ads)

I think the more specific argument is to avoid sudden changes in brightness.<p>Neither dark mode nor light mode is the one true “main” option. We had dark mode for a long time with terminals. Then light mode a long time with word processors and the web and OSes. And now we kinda have both.

I hate darkmode. Fight me.

Also; because system mode happens to be dark, doesn&#x27;t mean that the users would like dark mode by default. Every dark mode is not equal, and I&#x27;d like to start with light mode if possible.

I&#x27;m looking at you The Verge&#x27;s homepage.

But what if I have only dark mode?

The last time this topic came up on here, via a different article, the majority of commenters chose to gaslight the author and continue insisting dark mode is the only valid style.

Your light mode privilege is showing but seriously, maybe instead of writing an article with a tone about everything that&#x27;s wrong with a preference you have you could instead. do what every dark mode user has done and like you said.. just override the css. And then write an article with a tone about how you accomplished it. This just feels like complaining for the sake of complaining.

It&#x27;s not a &quot;mode&quot; if it&#x27;s just the design. The amount of whining from people who get &quot;uncomfortable&quot; when exposed to dark&#x2F;light designs is pathetic. What an utterly stupid thing to complain about.

...what is wrong with this person&#x27;s eyes