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Andrew Baisden
Andrew Baisden

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Light Vs Dark Themes what is your preference?

Ever since Apple introduced Dark Mode on iOS and macOS I have adopted it with a lot of the apps I have created recently. And I usually change the theme on a website to dark as well. Like Twitter, YouTube and even dev.to.

Top comments (38)

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cara_jacqueline profile image
Cara (Borenstein) Marin

I enjoy dark mode personally but contrast matters a lot. Really enjoyed this article by a designer at Superhuman on delightful dark themes. blog.superhuman.com/how-to-design-...

In particular, her point on avoiding smearing makes a huge difference. Smearing happens when you use pure black background with pure white text (or something close to it). The pixels blur together and it can strain your eyes.

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Andrew Baisden

Good article useful reference for the next time I try to create a dark theme for something.

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Michael Fasani

100% this! That's why I made a VS Code theme specifically for Coding in the Sun!
marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...

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William Henderson

Dark mode but not too colourful - I like my themes to be dark but pretty unsaturated

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fossheim profile image
Sarah

This 👆

Examples:

  • Blog posts, articles, books, etc (basically everything that has more than a few sentences to consume): light mode the majority of the time. I have difficulties reading big chunks of text on a dark background no matter the contrast.
  • Except when I'm having a bad headache, then dark mode for everything (where it's convenient to switch) cause the light makes it worse.
  • Things like Twitter (short sentences, lots of input, usually on my phone), almost always dark mode by default.
  • If I'm reading in bed with the lights off, often dark mode too so the light doesn't wake up my fiancée.
  • On my phone I don't bother to switch from the default a lot of the time because the toggles aren't always easy to find and I don't have patience.
  • Etc.
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andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

I agree it comes down to the preference and context.

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Michal Bryxí

90% of the time I use and prefer light theme. Unless it's really really really dark in my room, most dark themes are unusable thanks to poor contrast. I do love light & sun even (especially) when coding and the stereotypical "the display brightness is burning my eyes" is rarely an issue to me.

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Elliot Derhay

I love dark themes. I've been using them for at least 8 years (as much as I could get away with back then anyway, like Notepad++ and then eventually SublimeText).

It's taken so long for big software and service names to adopt dark themes. Trello finally did in their app recently and now I'm anticipating the same for their web app.

TBH the most surprising one for me was Facebook. But it was a welcome surprise. 🙂

And despite loving dark themes, I still have to admit there are a lot of nice color combinations that just work better with a light theme. If I go looking for a new VS Code theme for example, finding something I like takes such a long time. There are a lot of similar themes out there that are either super unsaturated or based around a single color (I may be a little obsessive when I start looking though 😖).

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Michiel Hendriks

You know that they invented lamps, right?

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Giorgos Sarigiannidis

In general, I tend to prefer light mode better. But I usually go with whatever is the software's default mode, because it's the one that gets the most attention and it's better polished, as it is not rare that small details are often get overlooked on the non-default version.

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Andrew Baisden

Thats true many software programs are usually built with one theme in mind to begin with. They don't usually offer a variety from the start.

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zhon12345

I have always been a fan of dark mode no matter the time or place, I personally think that dark mode is made for anytime and anywhere. You can use it during the day or night and its more soothing to the eyes while light mode will make your eyes hurt when used in the dark. Plus I am just used to using dark mode as i have been using it for probably 2 yrs+.

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

macOS desktop? I use light mode regardless of dark mode being suggested.

PyCharm, I also use light mode, because of familiarity (in the past). Android Studio and IntelliJ are also light mode.

VSCode, I use Default Dark+. Tried several light themes, but they never stick.

For general web surfing (and app with preferences), I NEVER prefer dark mode.

dev.to is also default light.