Technology

Native dark modes are better and have much less of a performance impact. It’s good as a stop gap though.

Yeah, Dark Reader is a godsend. I just got tired of all the light mode webpages and took matters into my own hands.

The TV Tropes wiki has managed to have a built in dark mode for at least the last 7 years. TV Tropes. Come on, guys.

It'd be kind of interesting to have a "dark mode spider" that crawls the Web and checks to see what percentage of websites support the browser-requested dark mode. I'd be kind of curious to see how far along we are.

I mean, people have done it for stuff like IPv6 support for a while.

Isn't #2 the only option?

Websites specifying color for foreground (or background) and assuming browsers will use whatever color they're expecting for the other has always existed, and still exists

If you're getting fancy and specifying colors, you can't cheap out and not specify all colors

If the browser ignores all your colors at that point, then it's displaying as the user intended

If you only specified some of the colors, it's a bug of the website

They added that too!

Light mode is likely just your personal preference, and there's nothing wrong with it.

I used dark themes/color schemes, long before there was a dark mode for everything. I was surprised when it finally became a thing and the new generation of dark themes was flawless (good bye unaddressed bright backgrounds which make everything unreadable!). So I can continue sitting in the Dark while not being blinded by a bright screen.

Light mode is pretty hard on the eyes in dim lighting, the same way dark mode is in full sun. Health-wise, it’s best to decrease the amount of light as bed time approaches and that includes screens beaming light into our face.

My computer defaults to light mode every morning and then I toggle dark later in the day when it becomes the more comfortable setting. So, for me it’s not really about “preference”.

Very happy to have dark mode Wikipedia for late night queries!

I'm an old fogey who grew up reading physical books and newspapers but I absolutely need dark mode on backlit displays. I despise light mode.

I hate dark mode, but it's because I have a pretty bad astigmatism. Dark mode makes all text look like several mirror images swimming around each other, whereas light mode is fine.

Or is it more of an age-gated thing

Depends how old you consider old, maybe? Computers back in the day were pretty universally light text on a dark background. VIC-20 was an exception but then even Commodore backpedaled on that with the 64. But you might have had a different experience and are only remembering things like Mac OS or Amiga, or Windows, and maybe that has influenced your preference. 🤷‍♀️ To each their own, anyway.

How old are you? I'm in my early 30s, definitely grew up with computers most of my life, and internet almost as long, but also read plenty of physical paper books. I greatly prefer darker color schemes.

That said, I'm also a software developer so I'm a bit biased and learned long ago that dark mode is much easier on the eyes when coding for hours on end, so maybe I'm just used to it.

I think dark mode for me stops me getting as many migraines as I did on light mode.

The way I think about reading text is that on dark mode you’re looking for light (white text) in darkness (the black background), whereas with light mode you’re looking for the absence of light (black text) on a background of pure light.

I don't think you can make a universal statement of dark versus light. Some programs' dark modes suck so I use their light mode. Some programs' light modes suck so I use their dark mode. Hell, some programs' high contrast modes are so good I use those despite not having any major (uncorrected) visual impairments. Take GitHub. Their high contrast mode is nice and not disgusting. IntelliJ IDEA's dark mode is good. Eclipse's light mode is good. It all just depends on the program.

And Solarized sucks ass. There, I said it.

As a Gen Z who is the same - I really don't think it is age-related.

Having read lots of books, I tend to prefer printed text a lot. Yet I still use dark mode as much as possible; it's the glare. It's irritating to read something on a white, glaring surface. Paper doesn't have that.

I'll read Wikipedia on e-ink, but on LCD I'll use dark mode.

I'd rather be informed with a popup than have to remember to periodically check the settings in case they've maybe added dark mode. Tying this to "advertising tactics" is, well, ridiculous – they're informing users about a new feature they might not otherwise learn about, not selling literally anything

I don’t mind the pop up as much as I mind it being a pop up that tells you to go to another menu to change the setting. Why not just put the setting in the pop up?

i think the pop up is necessary as long as the button to open the appearance menu is still the incognito icon for whatever reason

Maybe not avoid using entirely, but I can easily imagine someone that can't use it for more that 10 minutes or so because the brightness causes them headaches.

Ah, well, if you can't imagine it, then all those people with visual impairments who haven't been able to read the content previously simply must not exist! 🙄🤦‍♀️