Introduction
According to a survey, 70% of software engineers prefer a Dark theme IDE over the light theme. You will always a lot of dark theme in the popular theme section of any IDE. So why? Developers love the dark theme. So here I am going to list some reasons why I like the Dark theme.
1. Soothing to Eye
As obvious a dark theme helps us to focus on the screen without having irritation in our eyes. The dark theme doesn't make we go dry as compared to the white theme. During the low light situation, Dark theme is the most preferred theme.
2. More Concentration
Human eyes easily find something brighter in dark surround, it comes from our ancestor. So Dark Background helps us to see the font colour clearly in the editor. Also, the different colour for the different element is easily recognizable in the dark theme. It makes code easily readable because of contrast.
3. Save Energy
This point doesn't sound like an obvious reason but a dark theme help to save energy. It might be not a lot of energy but still, if you are working on the laptop for a long session it can be helpful. Also if most people use dark theme it will result in a large quantity of energy being saved.
I would love to know your reason to use a dark theme. You can tell your favourite dark theme also. Thank You guys for reading this blog post.
Discussion (106)
Light attracts bugs. We don't like bugs, right?
One line answer.
It's not bugs, it's features!
Nice one bro 🤣🤣
Amen 😂😂
😂😂😂😂
I've never fallen for dark mode but this make me consider a switch =)
Yep, you should give a try ♥️
Oh, I've tried it several times. If coding at night I think it's ok but for daily programming I find it makes the other screens appears so bright. I rather have a light mode with low brightness on the screen.
Yep, adjusting according to light is good practice.
Case closed! lol
Correct!!
This is great 😂
We can't afford to have bug in our house😂😂😂
hilarious 😂
better contrast, easier for the eyes 😉
I saw an article that says the opposite.
Let me find it
ux.stackexchange.com/questions/532...
Might be it's hard for white colour but other colours on black are easily readable. On white, we have a lot of trouble to read bright colour while on black we can easily read the bright colour without any trouble. IDE is made of multiple colours with each element is different, so dark is very suitable is such a situation.
Depends on color palette. I can't agree that colored code is any less readable on white if the right shades that is dark enough is chosen.
You can also chose shades that are hard to read on black.
Not that this is in any way scientific but:
#ffe0ffon#fff- I can still read#002000on#000- can't read at all, can't tell which color it isYep Bro, Everything at last comes to personal preferences and yes there are colours which you can't read clearly on dark but same goes for white theme IDE too.
My astigmatic eyes approves this.
Turns out that it depends.
You should try it and see if you can keep the same reading speed and how fast your eyes get tired.
While dark theme looks kinda Pro then it doesn't change code quality.
Think about what is good for you :)
Yeah, it comes down to individual preference anyways 😉
Yesss, it's always a personal preference.
I used to use dark mode on everything cause my eyes hurt when using light mode, but lately I got fatigue really easily and changed my dark mode behavior to light mode, now I can code longer without hurting my eyes, weird huh.
Same here bro, I am using dark mode on almost all my devices.
Yes that's why I love dark theme
I'm using dark theme everywhere not only in code IDE, because after over 30 years of computer use, I found dark screen so much pleasant for my eyes. I don't agree that light is smooth because I feel so much light from screen to my eyes in that way.
I also started to maximize the use of dark theme whenever I am looking at the screen.
Thats good for your eyes
I have the problems with light to my eyes but, I have not noticed it reduced with dark mode
Yess, Dark Theme helps eye.
I use Light-Theme on daytime because it's easier for the eyes in a bright environment and keeps the focus.
And on nighttime it switches to dark-mode by using a VSCode extension.
You can set when exactly it should switch and it can calculate when the sun goes down in your region. You can also add or subtract e.g. 30min from that time.
marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...
I used light themes for years. Then I suddenly switched to dark ones, because all my colleagues where using them. I found out a better experience, but when the sun shines in the room I think the light themes will perform better.
Yes, light play important role in choosing theme in low light dark themes are best and bright light light themes are best.
I didn't really like dark themes ... I always used the light "normal" theme or modified it to be more grayish.
Then, most of the development tools went the dark mode route by default and I felt it was too much trouble to change all of them so I stuck with it.
Now, I finally understand it was better all along and it was just that I was not used to it. I should have forced myself to use it years ago.
I hope now you Can adapt to dark theme era.
I like it now and I think I was wrong to be so reluctant before :D
Soothing to the eye... that depends. A light background can be just as good. Spacemacs e.g. has a very nice light theme. I tend to use the light one during the day, and switch to the dark one in the evening.
No idea where you got that "more concentration" thing for, source please?
The energy saving point is a myth, unless you have an OLED screen, and even then the only way it saves energy is if you have the background set to completely black. And hardly any dark theme does that.
So, yea...
You have a point bro.
Definitely easier on the eyes. I typically use blue-light blocking glasses when I'm working, but I love how relaxing dark themes are as opposed to being blasted with bright colors.
Yep, dark theme are blessings for our eyes.
I would like the dark theme, but I have to switch between the dark IDE and the light background websites and that ruins my eyes. The solution would be to switch the desktop to completely dark mode (via xfce4-night-mode, customized .vimrc to toggle background at night, etc.) and also view the websites in night mode, but I think that would be more work than advantage.
I’ve tried to switch to dark mode several times because I want to try it, but I’ve never been really successful. What technical solutions are there?
I use an extension called Dark Mode in my chrome website to toggle between dark and light mode. You can give a try.
I first thought dark theme is this gamer kiddy thing to look more like RGB style but in the end when you sit in front of your screen for 8+ hours multiple days dark theme was way easier on my eyes and I stayed with it.
I also started using dark theme across all my devices to save my eyes.
I've read a lot about this subject over the years and all the so-called "experts" say the exact opposite, but they also say to lessen the contrast to be softer on the eyes, for example a background of 0xEFEFEF and 0x0F0F0F text color...
I personally get massive headaches from light screens, but not other brighter lights except for the sun so I can't do without a dark theme.
Personal preference is the most important. If anyone is comfortable with dark go with dark or comfortable with white goes with white.
It is actually scientific that the light theme (dark on bright) is more readable, has much better contrast and makes you more productive. Dark theme on the other hand makes you work much harder in order to comperehend what you are seeing.
Most of the developers use it because most of developers just like fads or what they think makes them cool.
Just like so many of them insist on coding on an Apple machine for no reason (even though Apple is cleary anti-developer and they basically use Chrome anyway), or think that developing with a half keyboard or 3/4 laptop keyboard (like in the ads you attached to your article) is not a really bad idea, or prefereing the obviously forced and very error-prone javascript language, or hating Microsoft even though it's one of the only companies that care about giving really good tools to them, etc, etc...
I have seen with my own eyes how my developers struggle with the dark theme (not seeing things, having a hard time reading) while insisting at the same time that it's better (because everyone else says it's better...)
The only valid argument is that it's easier on the eyes when you are in a dark room (but it's still less readable so it's a compromise), but how often does that happen anyway ?
I need to say that dark themes don‘t save energy per se! The LCD Displays have a back illumination and the liquid Crystal blocks the light for the dark pixels. They use the same amount of backlight if you have white or black background image. OLED Displays produce light per pixel and can save energy when you use a dark background. That is why they can save battery for the newer smart phones. Sorry, physics geek here.
In regards to point #3...
If you ask me, the premise that a dark-themed IDE will use less energy is problematic at best.
Popularised by Blackle, an energy-saving, dark-themed alternative to Google, the energy saving nature of dark themed apps mostly only applies to mobile phones with an (AM)OLED screen and computers running an old-fashioned box monitor.
The boxy CRT monitors of the 90's and early 00's, similarly to modern (AM)OLED screens, creates light pixel by pixel. That means that the more light that's created, the more energy used. Thus, the brighter overall look of a theme, the more energy used.
The vast majority of laptop screens and current desktop displays work differently. LCD screens start with a certain amount of light coming from a backlight. That light passes through a screen which dims certain pixels depending on how dark a theme is. Aside from screens with intelligent, multi-zone backlight dimming, the darker the screen doesn't mean less energy is used because the backlight is still on.
In addition to the backlight, the switching of the LCD pixels from light to dark uses energy. This can differ because some screens use energy to switch from light to dark, and then spring back to light when the power is removed, while others use energy to switch from dark to light. The former screens will even use more energy for a dark theme because it takes power to keep the pixels of the LCD screen dark.
Finally, I personally tend to turn up the overall brightness of my screen when using a dark theme so that the text pops out even more. In the case of an LCD screen that works exactly the wrong way for trying to save energy.
I can say that I'm looking forward to MacBooks with AMOLED Retina (or whatever the follow up to that will be) screens, so that black is truly black and dark themes will actually use less energy.
For now, though, you'll need to get a laptop that does have, or an IDE that will work on your AMOLED mobile phone :)
I used light Theme 😂
That's something surprising bit yesss it personal choice
😂😂😂
Because eclipse leaves lifelong traumas...
We hate light theme
Many people (only me?!) like to show off that cool setup with that pitch black dark theme 😂 😅
Everybody do 🤣🤣
Did you ever opened your IDE at night with a light theme enabled? It burns in your eyes 😂
I didn't take that risk till date 🤣🤣🤣🤣
If you have a bad display, light theme might be better. Because bad displays cant do both good dark and light contrast at the same time.
Very cool :)
Currently I'm learning more about REST APIs, Firebase Auth, and creating some small projects to put on my Github.
Yep :D
Btw, how is WickedTemplates going?
Haha I try my best 😂😂
Fun fact: it actually takes more energy to display a dark image than a white image on LCD monitors.
OLED in screen can save energy
Probably won't save much energy unless you're running an OLED display
Yes, good point bro
Don't forget the bugs!
Easier on my eyeballs.
Number 1 reason, looks cool and makes all us devs look like hardcore hackers to the outside world. Let’s be honest here haha
Yep most of Dev do this and I am one of them 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Because it looks like a poster of The Matrix and makes me look like a hacker to the eyes of non-coders when I type var_dump() and console.log()
We also do this trick 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I agree with all of these points. Good article!
Thank you brother ♥️
I am programming in the sunglasses.