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Who Else Does NOT Like Dark Mode?

Yaser Al-Najjar on September 02, 2019

In case you didn't realize, dark mode is the new trend in UI/UX. EVERY popular app / website you use is adding the "Dark Mode" feature. What wow-...
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Suzanne Aitchison

Generally I prefer dark modes for my eyes 👀... What I don't like though is that so many companies are so focused right now on delivering a dark mode rather than other features that would genuinely help people and improve experience - e.g. accessibility fixes, getting to those annoying bugs, etc

When buggy apps push an update to unveil their snazzy dark mode it makes me grumpy 😂

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Yaser Al-Najjar

😂😂

Many devs don't know how to prioritize their feature delivering for sure!

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combinatorylogic

Good for you. It is not a new trend at all, people used to prefer green on dark background back in the VT100 times.

These days, if you have even a very light form of astigmatism, dark background is better for you. Otherwise it's only a matter of a personal taste. The thing is, a huge proportion of population have astigmatism, hence the "trend" you're noticing.

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Yaser Al-Najjar

Ah, I see where this came from... it's biological!

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Md.Rafiuzzaman Khan 🇧🇩

Dark mode is distracting for me , i have been using mac classic theme for a while and when i try dark mode i dont even understand my own code .

mac classic in sublime

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abhishek sharma

True I had same problem about 1 year ago I use to write all php code in notepad++ white default white background .. now I move to vscode for everything dark+ default is best in my opinion it take few days to set your eyes but it works charm after that

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Andrew Grothe

Dark mode all the time. My office is nicknamed the "bat cave" as I keep the lights off and just use a lamp. I find white backgrounds hard on my eyes. I rejoiced the day Eclipse IDE finally supported a usable dark theme and prefer Visual Studio for its superior dark themes. Every app that has a dark mode is switched on permanently as well. I read somewhere that a certain percentage of people prefer one over the other based on genetics or something.

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Yaser Al-Najjar

batman

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Ryan McConnell

I find the "light mode" is much easier for me. It's cheerier and puts me in a better mood than dark mode. Dark mode also reminds me of my preteen years visiting old forums that were always black with white text, and I've had enough of that thank you!

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Lalo Téllez

I can't live without it. I find it so comfortable to use on everything. My Visual Studio, my SQL Server Manager, my browser and every website I use has this dark theme, even the ones it doesn't have it by default, like Facebook, I use Stylish to apply a dark theme.

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

I like dark themes in general, but I absolutely hate the 'inverted-color' or 'black' themes that many sites and apps are using as a 'dark' theme.

A good dark theme shouldn't have super high contrast between the text and the background (just like a good light theme should have a bit less than perfect contrast between the text and the background). DEV's 'night theme' is an example of a good one, other than how blue it is (I prefer neutral or warm gray myself for stuff like this).

However I am absolutely against auto-switching based on light-level unless you provide an option for a user to override the automatic behavior. Some people just prefer one or the other, and some actually need one or the other (dark themes tend to help people with astigmatism pretty significantly).

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Yaser Al-Najjar

I like the way you illustrated the difference between good and bad dark theme 👌

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Lisa Armstrong • Edited

I prefer dark words on a light background, I find dark mode hard to read.

I thought that came from a life time of reading black on white, but apparently it's a thing.
maketecheasier.com/are-dark-themes...

I work in a bright natural light room (I'm a programmer, not a mushroom), so keep it light for me!

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Yaser Al-Najjar

Hmm... Did you try twilight app (with light mode)?

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Alan Solitar • Edited

I love dark themes. They're really important for accessibility and are much easier on the eyes in my opinion. However, I may be biased since I have some eye problems that make me unable to handle bright white backgrounds.

Overall, I think the trend is a positive one, though like I said, I'm biased.

I don't like the ambient light feature much as I always want a dark theme. Though it is a cool feature.

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Yaser Al-Najjar

Would you believe it if I told you I was doing lots of debugging in dark mode, in OllyDBG:

olly

I still can't believe how I survived this for many years 🙄

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Cristina Solana

Not just you. Me too.

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Yaser Al-Najjar

High five 🤚

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Rod Austin

I like dark mode for certain things, but not others. Coding and Youtube are 2 examples of when dark mode makes sense, but web search not so much. Not sure why - habit maybe.

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Yaser Al-Najjar

Yep, when you need focus the dark mode might be a nice idea.

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tia

I actually like dark theme, but my eyes just don't agree with me. If I use dark mode for more than a few minutes, I will see the screen overlay on everything when I look somewhere else.