My friends use light mode discord in school so if a teacher glances at their screen he or she wont notice that it's discord, and you can also switch to google classroom or docs without the screen flashing from dark to bright.
darkmode and lightmode being both available are important for accessibility reasons. being extremely sensitive to light myself, i cannot read sites that don't have it well often. my mom on the other hand cannot read darkmode as easily, and always uses lightmode when possible
I feel like all the accessibility designs sucks. I would like to be able to control my background color my font color and my font style inline size. I guess that's too much to ask for as there is only dark mode or bright mode with crappy font options and no color options.
If I could give you multiple thumbs up, I would. I was involved in an accessibility working group a while back and got to meet lots of people with very contrasting needs. I knew they varied; I didn't realise they varied _that_ much.
I'm cool with having more font options and color options. But do we really need more background color options? Bright and dark mode pretty much fits all sorts of situations. If there are more background options, I feel like it would be popular for 2 or 3 weeks, then people would go back to bright or dark mode again.
@@ralphfi9591 We definitely do. For example: Some people (particularly those with astigmatism) benefit from a grey background to reduce the effects of halation or bloom. Meanwhile people who have to read using their perifferal vision (eg stargardt disease) need as much contrast as possible (ie white text on a pure black background). There are many other use-cases that can, and should, be addressed by simply having the options available.
There's a hidden unsupported feature in Wikipedia to enable Dark Mode, but it mostly just inverts the colors of everything on the page and attempts to invert-invert any images that were messed up. I use it all the time and love it!
Paper and palm-leaf manuscripts which would be "light theme" are both older than chalkboard. You could however argue that cave paintings were dark mode depending on the rock that was used.
I just switched youtube to lightmode after using darkmode for years just to see the difference. It literally looks like an entirely new website. I switched back with the speed of a toddler at bedtime.
My mom showed me something on her phone yesterday and it took me some time to recognise the app because it was in light mode. It was Instagram! I didn't recognize Instagram because it wasn't dark!
@@tryoxiss you tell them its bed time and try to pick them up to bring them to bed and the slippery little creatures dash away with the quickness. it is the last push before the inevitable.
As an architect, I’ve noticed that a white or black background hurts my eyes more and instead our default background is actually dark blue, like CAD, which is much easier to look at all day
Exactly. Like if this is actually a war between sun brigt eye burning light white and death dark black. No it is not. It is a matter of not over doing things. Just do not use pure white and do not use pure dark. Use a good contrast on text. Make the text readable in size and type. It _is_ allowed to use actual colors on a color screen too.
I grew to love Dracula themes, which is a dark purple with green and orange highlights. It is a site dedicated to creating the same consistent easy to look at theme for every application under the silicon
My reason for using light mode wasn't even mentioned: eye burn-in. Lines of bright text on a dark background leave afterimages for quite a long time, which messes with my vision and I find uncomfortable. Light backgrounds have a much more even afterimage, because even dark text is still mostly light space, and therefore don't leave noticable artifacts.
I have the same issue. Even if I might prefer the dark mode aesthetics, the text afterimage is so intense and annoying there's just no way I can use it. I wonder if anyone will ever determine what's different about eyes like ours.
@@killerkonnat well probably a genetic defect, since its not only just a screen that hurts my eyes when its bright. its also when its bright outside or just anything bright.
You should try something like f.lux. (Or whatever the phone equivalent would be if you primarily use a smartphone.) It sets a warmer color profile on your screen which avoids a lot of eye strain. Between that and brightness settings that aren't significantly brighter than your environment, you can lessen eye strain by a ton. I have really sensitive eyes to the point that I often have to squint outside even on overcast days but not only do light themes not hurt my eyes when sitting at my computer but dark themes actually result in issues because they're so much darker then my environment so looking away from my screen on sites with dark themes actually hurts my eyes now.
@@Sirevanaccactually it happens with me. I physically can’t read white text on black background. It all just blurs into lines of white and I get a headache.
I think usually dark mode looks horrible, in particular on youtube, but that's not really the point, the point is whether the text has enough contrast and is easily readable in size and type. I like the flow better in light mode, I don't think most companies care at all about dark mode all they do is they invert the colors which looks terrible, and so I agree with the host here, dark mode is about horrible design and then selling it as revolutionary and good for health and battery life.
@@AntiAtheismIsUnstoppable yeah fair enough, i agree that it's entirely aesthetic, the supposed benefits are basically nonexistent. some websites have terrible dark mode, i agree, but some are nice imo. especially code editors, people have made actually nice dark themes for them.
@@KingJellyfishII Design is like food. Some like spicy food, some do not. And some like light light mode, some like dark. I am not against dark mode, but to sell what is a theme as something sent from God, I mean... Let people have the choice that is good, everyone is happy to have their own choice, and built it into the OS itself too I am very fine with that too, I am all for choice. But it's the over selling I do not like. Actual good design is to me, to not over do things. Don't use very bright white, don't use completely black black. Use good contract on text and a good readable font. And make the design follow the four design principles too, such that it is in sync, no matter if it's darker or lighter. And then do accessability testing.
@@KingJellyfishII My code editor actually has a theme which is neither light nor dark, but in the middle :) It's a tidbit pastel red and very friendly to look at - for me :) But I did spend an awful lot of time to find the right font, to find the right syntax highlighting colors which have the best contrast and are still nice to look at. My eye sight is not the best, contrast is what is most important for me. But I agree with you, very light white is not good to look at.
also the reason why I prefer dark mode on emitting devices (smartphone, laptop, desktop) but prefer lightmode on non-emitting ones (electronic paper like amazon kindle)
White paper is meant to be highly reflective. How is reflected light different than emitted light in your opinion? It can be both be to bright or to dark. White printer paper can just be too bright in direct sunlight (I guess that is why lots of books do not have completely white paper). Light is light in the end of the day.
i always use light mode for work/study related stuff because ive noticed it keeps me more alert. then i switch to dark mode when im trying to relax and wind down.
Yes! People hate when they see that I code in light mode, but I tried switching back-and-forth dark/light mode, and I do feel that it is easier for analyzing code, comparing text and keeping me awake. But also might be that I am old and never got onto the Dark Mode trend.
10/10 on that ad. no seriously. i didn't even realize it until about 2/3rds into it. felt more like product placement than watching a commercial and i think thats the perfect way to include a sponsor!
I use Eye Comfort mode on every device. This really helped. My night mode filter is set to 75% on Windows, maximum on my phone. You'll get used to it really quickly, you can't go without it after using it a few days.
I've been using f.lux on PC since the year 26 BC. For the past few years I've also used a program called Dimmer to make the screen darker than the lowest brightness setting.
Dark Mode and Light Mode being a toggle is actually good for design of websites, because it has forced many projects and companies to create more cohesive and company wide Design Systems and Rubrics. Also, again we're talking about the personal aspect here, more customization the better, not everyone who uses an Android device goes as crazy with customization as i do, but they are allowed to. Customization is also incredibly important to address different disabilities, there are many forms of impaired vision and the more options given allows end users who may be disabled in some way to fix something a designer may not have known because they're able bodied.
I find it weird that people who use Android phones seemingly always find a reason to talk about it I mean even if iOS or Android was mentioned casually in the video, it’s hardly part of the point of the video
@@himynameisryan It directly relates to what I'm talking about, more customization is always a good thing and the goat (Sabrina) brings up the new feature in iOS which was touted as groundbreaking when it's basic levels of customization that they should've had for a while. As a Software Engineer who does work for accessibility, many designers can easily forget about how their design will impact disabled people
@@buffet_time but like I said She only mentions iOS 18 as like a side thing in the video The Android vs iOS debate is unimportant to the topic of the video Yet you see a need to bring it up Also every person with life altering disabilities I know or have seen on the internet sings Apple’s praises for their extensive accessibility settings For example on my 15 pro max the accessibility section in settings is twice as long as the one my s24 ultra
@@himynameisryan ya no Apple consistently goes against their own published accessibility guidelines and industry standards in many products. And let alone that, the lack of customization inherently is worse for accessibility, the more you can change especially when we're talking about core things like colors, where things are placed, the sizes of things, etc the better. And this is ignoring Apples consistent state of being far behind in Web Spec in comparison to Chromium and Firefox based browsers which often includes new accessibility features, or causing issues in websites because of their inability to adhere to standards which ends up hurting the accessibility of the same site on Safari. At the company I work at we constantly experience this where edge case bugs that don't exist in any Chromium or Firefox browser exist on iOS (because Apple forces all browsers to be skins of Safari on iOS) or Desktop Safari. Still that's besides the point, more customization is always better to allow for workarounds for disabled people, which is why playing games on PC where you can connect either directly or with cheap X to USB adapters any controller or input that exists throughout history and get it working. Sony has done nothing and is wholly inaccessible as a platform, Xbox has a few really quality modular controllers but falls short in it being a locked down OS but is still doing something. But the customization of a real desktop is what allows many people I know personally to enjoy games given severe mobility issues. Companies like Apple who have poor design in general that feels 10 years out of date consistently and have very little customization will always be worse for accessibility. Don't care to continue this further as it's pointless, but sidenote Apple should stop participating in orchestrating coups and working with warlords to secure resources and having slave labor to make more profit /shrug
@@himynameisryan I find it weird that you're getting so defensive over someone using the more customizable operating system as an example for customization being good for users.
As a graphics designer, I’ve always just been used to dark mode. As you mentioned, it allows us to focus on the workpiece and is also critical for me when comparing tonal values or works that require color accuracy. As for apple’s decision in iOS 18, I think this is more a reactionary move since competitors are offering customizability which goes against the hard-coded stylization of Apple GUIs in general. So in a way, it’s Apple buckling to pressure because the public perception is that their GUIs are outdated. Don’t know is if this was the best answer to that though.
I heard a story about a company using an employees work as a graphics designer to train AI to take his job. The AI can basically do what the graphics designer could and the company would save a lot of money. Is this something you are concerned about a as graphics designer?
@@Toby_RUclips978 in that particular example, if it’s done without the knowledge of the designer, that’s definitely an ethical issue. As for AI used for design in general, it depends. Most AI-generated designs are still buggy but the mistakes are often overlooked by the general audience because the fidelity of design is not what’s important; rather, it’s the use of imagery to achieve specific goals (ie. engagement, replies, views, etc.) So the challenge to designers is differentiation and constant evolution. At some point, it will be similar to how painters had to differentiate from photographers through stylization, abstraction, etc. I believe these are things artists that will always place the artist ahead of the AI curve - but at the same time, more than ever, protections need to be put in place to prevent their work from being used unethically. It will have to fall to some oversight committee to prevent people from taking content from curated websites without consent… but this is easier said than done. People can always pull images off google search and use it to feed algorithms. But to return to your question, yes it’s concerning, but at least in my field where my designs are applied, I don’t see it totally replacing me. If anything, I’m more concerned with Adobe’s monopoly and their unethical practices. But that’s a different issue altogether.
@@mikukumiku Thank you for the reply. I guess only time will tell. In the example I provided it was done without the knowlegde of the designer. The only positive thing about that situation is that the youtube video he made about it became popular, so he earned a couple bucks off of that. I cant remember his name but I should benable to find it by searching: I lost my job to AI.
I'm a programmer, so I have to read a lot of digital text during the day in daylight. When I started, I was a dark mode user, but at some point I noticed how my eyes were always very strained and I had to take breaks for my eyes, and that's when I switched. It's just so much more comfortable.
That is also my experience. The white text in dark mode produces halos for me, which causes my eyes to tear. I read that it is due to having small irregularities in the cornea or lens. I am now using blue filter mode in combination with light mode.
What I'm currently doing is switching to light mode in quite bright environments, e.g. with lots of sunlight etc. Otherwise, I'm still using dark mode (that may change, don't know though).
I adore the vibes of this video. The clarity of thought to ask questions of your questions, the human stakes of proving your friends wrong, the tight script presenting the results of tons of research and academic results without dragging. I found this channel while working on weekend projects like a year ago and those projects have been completely shelved for more than 6 months, but this has got me feeling motivated to dust them back off
I was dark mode for a long time now, but recently tried out light mode. I found right away that not only could I read much better with light mode, but I was able to run my brightness lower. I have always used 100% brightness on every screen because I felt I needed it to enhance the contrast for reading, but once I started using light mode I could run my brightness at 15% sometimes and still see what I was doing. When trying dark mode again, I am unable to see the screen at lower brightnesses. I also find I am on my phone WAY less at night with light mode on, simply because of the dreaded flash bang effect.
pretty sure the first title (like for the first couple hours) was something similar to "Dark mode vs Light mode". and they changed it to something more catchy to engage curiosity
this video sucks so badly. i used the bad recommendations addon for firefox to make sure this channel never gets recommended again. the over-compressed valley girl voice with its intense overuse of fry register is so intensely annoying. i've paused the video after two minutes, tried going on for another 30 seconds, and then just turned it off. after reconsidering, i went to the time stamps to see if i can find the buried lede. instead, i was met with someone's middle life crisis. crappy memes from twitter 10 years ago. the bird site is dead. get over it. miss me with that sht
@@Axel_Andersen Customization is better for everyone, even if many/most people don't use it. Character creation is þe best example. Would you raþer be forced to play Skyrim as a Nord or choose to play Skyrim as a Nord?
I started having double vision issues a few years ago. My optometrist couldn't identify a problem, and so I started searching the internet for it (I know, sketchy thing to do, but I was desperate). I stumbled across a bunch of posts on reddit about people with bad astigmatism who were noticing that dark mode was causing massive eye strain, and who recommended switching back to light mode. I've been using light mode ever since, and have had no issues with double vision. So no, dark mode isn't always better for your eyes.
Same here, dark mode makes it hard for me to see because of my astigmatism. And as she said, if you find light mode too bright... Then try to brighten your surroundings.
I've been having a similar issue lately and been using dark mode for years. I'm gonna switch and see if it makes a difference. Edit: I just switched windows to light mode and oh boy will this take getting used to again
I think other was a missed reason for dark mode. Screens universally got brighter so light mode became unpleasant. with CRTs and old LCDs the brightest they got was like... 70 lumens. Now they are in the 300s, and in HDR, possibly over 1000. White backgrounds that were normal and fine in the past really did become flash bangs to people. If light modes had a more parchment like brightness in the background to keep the brightness down, people would find it to not as blinding, and light modes would be more used.
honestly, if more apps and websites had a more orange toned theme for their light mode, id use them WAYYYY more. but with how BLINDING of whites most sites use are, its just easier on my eyes, even WITH astigmatism
I think certain colour schemes look good on LCDs and others on oleds. I do not like semi dark grey colour schemes on oleds, but they are perfect on LCDs. LCDs give a very matte casual imperfect, but perfectly readable impression while oleds are much more vibrant especially smartphones maybe matte oleds plastic oleds will be a perfect middle ground between the LCD and the glossy glass oiled.
this is your first video I've ever seen and I absolutely _LOVE_ your editing and filming/style!!! I'm sure it takes a long time, which is extremely impressive, but it's also very engaging and entertaining---solid 10/10
The last part about companies adding useless things to their products just for the sake of it struck home. When I got my new phone, the setup sequence couldn't continue unless I installed some random games and apps like TikTok, which I don't even use. I miss having operating systems work as utilities rather than branded advertisement devices.
My phone "easy" setup forces you to install google pay, like.. what ? Thankfully you can turn off the notification for the reminder and just use it "partially" setup, but holy shit, that's the kind of shit that makes me understand why my grandma doesn't try to learn new tech anymore.
yeah, grapheneOS has been working well, and the majority of the bloatware is stuff I installed myself(like google play store). tho I've heard good things about calyxOS for the non google Pixel android users
I'm an autistic person with sensitive senses. To me, light mode is so overwhelming. I deal with it as best I can when I have no option. When I switch from a light mode app to dark mode app, I feel the stress in body go down.
As another autistic person, I prefer light mode over dark mode for two reasons. First, it is what I am familiar with growing up learning to use Word, PowerPoint, and many softwares in light mode. Second, the hype around dark mode such as on Reddit seems like a silly arbitrary social rule to me.
@@notthatcreativewithnames , Not all autistic people have all the same problems. Your sense of bright light may not be that sensitive. Personally, my sense of smell is not that sensitive but everything else seems to be very sensitive. It's very stressful when I encounter loud noises, bright light, and ect. Bright light from a screen from a device is very stressful for me. It's not because of all the hype. It is because of my autism and nothing else. It's not because I don't get used to the brightness. If that was the case, I wouldn't have this anymore because I use a computer with light mode software all day.
@@calimorale9880 , This hype reminds of the gluten free health hype. People were switching to a gluten free diet and thought they were eating a healthier diet. In reality, the gluten free didn't help them with a healthier diet unless they had celiacs or were allergic to gluten. Same issue here. At least, I get a benefit from some of the dark mode software like someone I know that has celiacs get a good selection of food. It's weird how that works out.
I have sensitive eyes, so the sudden pop ups of light really hurt And to all the people trying to say to me ways that will ‘fix’ this, dark mode already does that, so just stfu, I couldn’t care less
@@TheInfintyithGoofball address what? It’s simply because the eyes need to constrict, due to the sudden burst of light. The sudden burst of light means it all goes through the more relaxed iris, because my eyelids are not faster than light
I'm sure that's pretty annoying... :( When it's nighttime I have to use a special app to make the brightness of my screen darker than my device usually allows you to make it with setting But I use light mode for everything anyway
I don’t know if this is consistent with your content because this is the first video I’ve ever scene of this channel but the editing is done beautifully how did you do that?☠️☠️
As an editor that works with text all the freaking time, dark mode allows me to work way longer stints than light mode. It also does help me not to crunch to the latest hours, since it keeps me less awake than light mode does. When I need light for visual comfort, I brighten the room, not the screen. Also... I don't care much about colours on the screen. My favourite preset for Windows UI used to be "cloudy day".
I cannot use light mode. I have very sensitive eyes and always have to use the minimum brightness settings on devices, often even using accessibility settings to reduce the brightness below the minimum. Dark mode is so amazing for me. if I have too much white on my screen for too long my eyes hurt. if I accidentally turn my brightness up and don’t realise I can get a headache and have no idea why until I realise I accidentally turned my brightness up. Not offering dark mode can make me just not use a product.
Same here; my screens are all extra dark, every OS & app set to dark mode, and I use the dark background/large font "Read Mode" in Firefox for every website with significant amounts of text. I can't read anything on Wikipedia without it.
And this is precisely why the Mac has had an “invert” screen mode for decades. Dark mode is fundamentally just an improved version of that, where hues don’t get inverted, too. Similarly, many video and hoots editing programs were “dark mode” long before that was a thing, because you didn’t want a bright user interface drowning out a dimly lit scene you were editing. Both of those are functional examples of why light-text-on-dark-background has real uses. The modern dark mode obsession, in turn, has nothing to do with needs, it’s just a fad…
Coming from UX designer, yeh agreed most studies I've read say : Dark Text on a Light background (light mode) = less strain on your eyes for longer text like paragraphs. Light text on dark BG (Dark mode) = Good for shorter text like headers (also tends to be more attention-grabbing). As in most cases with design context is key.
Coming from the point of a user. If the background is very bright, then I will not use the application. I have run into more than one ux designer whose response to my wish for a dark variant is that I am wrong (for one reason or another). I think it's pretty obvious that many users have a pretty strong preference for one or the other. I'm pretty tired of hearing that a website I completely skipped over because it was too bright to comfortably read somehow has good design and I just don't get it.
Light text on dark BG (Dark mode) = migraine If I come across something defaulted to dark mode and can't find a way to turn it off, I won't use that thing.
I'm not sure I understand - are you arguing against personalisation at the end? The new options being added to allow you to tint your icons how you like aren't intended to serve some sort of accessibility purpose (though they may find one), but to allow users to pesronalise how their iOS looks according to their own tastes. Possibly to match the case they've put it in. There was some interesting analysis in the video, but the added on conclusion and title are kind of jarring, and feels like a strange thing to target. It's good when you're allowed to adjust things to your tastes. Computers typically used to let you do it a lot more than they do now.
Android allows you to personalise everything or at least so much that it feels that way. Icon personalization has been a thing for at least 3 years could be more. I used a Huawei for a long time and it was easy to personalise my phone back than. Stopped using the brand when they had to switch to their own ios. Thanks to Thrump😑... Huawei was such a good in between good quality for a reasonable amount of money.
@@KoishiteAkuma90oh believe me, it was a thing MUCH before 3 years Even my dinky android phone about 6-7 years ago had the option to manually add icon packs or icons
Except the only "personalization" option is "pick your single favorite color and make literally everything that." I hate that, and I hate that it's where design is headed. Windows is like that now too. Everything is just solid black, white, and One Color, As A Treat. Whatever happened to themes, designed by real designers? Whatever happened to textures, gradients, and variety among the things you use? Not every user is that one girl you knew in high school whose entire personality was the color pink or purple and went out of her way to buy only things that were that color!
@@edgarwalk5637 You can actually customize all of that! In your settings.json (for user or workspace) you can change the colors of everything. You can even do it in cpp_properties.json if you want conditional coloring/highlighting based on any number of things like language of the file - maybe you want c variables to be red and c++ to be blue. Everything you can set in settings.json files are also changeable in the settings menu. It's a highly customizable lightweight-IDE. I just presented this to my organization as a replacement for Eclipse since it has native Git integration and extensions are so good.
Well it's usually also poor design and terrible looking design, because what they mostly do is they invert the colors which looks terrible. But... they can sell it as dark mode which will get more customers. Dark mode is about clicks and customers from PR - not about good design or the individual user at all. It's basically a hoax. But I must admit that Apple does one thing good: They can sell pooh as if it is gold.
Windows 95 came with multiple colour scheme presets for the system colours, and you could customize them however you like, so it's been weird seeing those get reduced to just 2 modes.
That's right. But Microsoft didn't care to develop dark visual styles for Windows XP… and now we're stuck with light mode for classic Win32 apps. Even Royale Noir theme has light grey background for dialog boxes and white background for main document surface, like in Notepad. In Windows 10 and 11, only apps using the new WinUI controls have dark mode support.
I just wanted to say that this is the first video of yours that has ever popped up for me, I watched it expecting a BuisnessInsider-style history of dark mode, and came away utterly gobsmacked. The incredible level of production, amazing editing, and your wonderful, hilarious and intelligent commentating, not to mention the extraordinary level of research and attention to detail made this video a brilliant watch. Thank you so much for showing your passion and creativity through a video that could have easily been a couple of interviews with designers - it was so informative and entertaining! I'm sure this comment will get lost in the void of the Internet, but I really just wanted to put it out there that I was surprised in the most wonderful way, and I cannot wait to watch more of your videos!
Started with DOS and coding in BASIC. When I started using CAD ware (~1994) we all switched the background to black or dark grey. Staring at a 21" CRT all day lit like a fluorescent bulb was NOT an option. We even dimmed the lights (by removing tubes) in the design studio. Today I dark mode everything.
My background is very similar but conclusion opposite. When we started to use CAD on a well lit office light mode (new back then with Xerox and Mac) was heaven sent. And I still use it. Having a well lit studio is so much better for eye sight and a white paper like screen is so much better when you are referencing books and paper drawing all the time. With 3D modelling dark mode to me just sucks. I guess this really is a matter of personal preference and there is no true which is better argument to be made.
Well, during lockdown I wanted a way to differentiate between privat and work screentime. To separate them "emotionally" so to say. As a consequence I switched the work device and all the applications to light mode. All my private stuff stayed on the dark side and to be honest, I real enjoyed that separation and nothing has changed to today.
Light mode is usually easier to read, because light text on dark backgrounds glow, which can blur the letters together. I don't personally find it a problem and usually set my theme depending on the time of day, but I know a lot of people who do. Both options are definitely important to have.
Personally I actually feel like the exact reverse is true for me. When trying to read black text on a glowing, white background for a long period of time, my eyes get tired from all the bright light which blooms, making the delicate lines of the text even thinner and therefore making it very difficult to read. When reading black text on a white background on my computer, if the text is particularly long at all, I will usually have to lean in closer to the screen and squint just a little to be able to see it better. Meanwhile with dark modes, I can lean back more comfortably and read the white text on black backgrounds much easier. This, of course changes once I'm on a phone or tablet screen, when the screen is pretty close to my face. It's not a big problem for me, but can be a bit annoying, which is why I prefer dark mode options for websites when they are offered. But yes! Having options for different people with different needs is definitely a better choice for everyone involved, really! Honestly, I think that the best option is to have something that's baseline usable for everyone, but to have oodles and oodles of customization options for people who need it, or for those who just like to fiddle with those kinds of things because they're fun! (And I am one of those people lol)
@@valasdarkholme6255 Personally, for documents/ebooks, I like black on sepia. Maybe the trick is not using straight white unless you really need the contrast.
My eyes are pretty light sensitive, so I need dark mode and it's a lot easier to read. I can barely see a single line on a white piece of paper for example. If designers prioritised softer colours like Sepia or other colours besides white, it would be good, but it's usually just white or off white, and those just burn my eyes pretty much.
The nihilistic twist section is like comparing a wooden chair and an ergonomic chair in order to determine which is better for health, and then stating the both are different as the wooden chair wouldn't let you sit in it as much as the ergo, forcing you to stand up and maybe move around, making it better for your health, as sitting for long hours affects the spine and other parts negatively... Before starting a comparison, there should be proper boundaries set in order to get an answer with the least amount of deviation.
I sit in a wooden chair all the time and I'm not standing up to alleviate strain. The thing is that any chair is unhealthy if you sit in the exact same position for a long time, your body is not designed to do that. The same way if you're standing still you start shifting around on your feet because it's uncomfortable, while you don't have the same strain while walking. If you're on a wooden chair and it starts feeling uncomfortable, sit in a slightly different way. So you end up shifting a bit every 10-15 minutes. It's actually healthier for you if you do that on an "ergonomic" chair but you're less likely to feel the need to do that because your body doesn't remind you until hours or days or months later. I'm getting close to middle-aged and all my friends have been complaining about back pain for years. I don't have any despite sitting more than them. Except when I was sitting on cheap office chairs at a job.
My dude, thats not what she said at all lmao. Maybe rewatch that section? What was actually said is that both are functionally the same in regards to all the proposed "benefits" of dark mode, and what it comes down to is comfort, which is NOT the same for everyone. She even points out that that comfort is largely determined by what you grew up using, where young folks are used to being served apps in dark mode default. Maybe light mode is like a flashbomb to you, but dark mode is like staring into a starstreaked void for me, its not just uncomfortable its unusable. People who try sooo hard to scientifically justify their preference for dark mode are so obnoxious, why do you care so much whats going in in someone elses screen, get off your high horse.
There are a lot of sites and apps that are only available in dark mode. I really struggle to use dark mode because I have astigmatism. When I have to use a dark mode site it hurts my eyes, gives me headaches, text is blurry and unreadable, and I get white lines over my vision for a few minutes even when I look away from the screen. Some sites are worse than others, but some are basically unusable for me. I wish all websites would have a light mode option available so everyone can use the site comfortably.
I so a "select all" so that the text has my highlight color behind it. It's not perfect (or pretty) but it helps it burning the stripey image into my retinas.
First of all, I also wish all websites had ease of use in mind, which includes colour, contrast, etc. But as someone who also has quite bad astigmatism (and often looks at his phone without his glasses - in the mornings/evenings), while I do find white text on black creating some blur, I get a similar experience from black on white 🤷🏻
I get this for "blackout" mode or whatever else it's called. If the background is pure black it's very uncomfortable for me. Dark grey is fine but even then looks ugly for a lot of sites/apps imo.
Meanwhile they added some "super bright" mode that some videos trigger that totally ignores your screen brightness settings and just blasts you with brightness
1:06 I’m on his side, I have the “night shift” set up on my devices so if there’s an option for apps to sync with that it’s turned on, if there’s not it’s on bright mode until the one time I have a headache and need dark mode and then it just stays cause I don’t see a point turning it back 😂
Ohh i hate so much the "skip the boring stuff" bit, both editing and the bit. In a show that supposedly "promotes curiosity" being purposefully told that we should not be curious about methodology, detail and results is baffling
I guess that's the problem with "pop science" (i suppose it's not really pop science since it's not talking about curious things like chemistry or physics experiments, but i can't think of a better term)
thankks for saying this! it's exactly what i thought!!!! if you don't want to include it in the video in order to get more people to watch it, you should at least say "i'm going to sum it up but if you're interested in the whole explanation here is the data and my explanations in a link below" or something like that
not everyone has the energy to be like Technology Connections who will create another one or three videos of just the boring bits. She might have gone into explaining it and realized in post-production that she rambled on too much or the actual video was usable due to video quality etc.
I used dark mode for years and recently switched back to light. I enjoy how there's so much more color in the design of icons. Plus some apps have different colored themes you can apply, but only in light mode. This last point is a bit harder to find the right words for, but it also makes things look more solid(?) or "real"(?).
I use dark mode for stuff but always prefer when things have color than it just being shades of gray. Like the dark blue option instead of solid black in twitter, and at work I just use outlook and word in light mode cause the dark mode ones are just gray and gross
And I keep spending literal hours with every new smartphone of mine to make all these icons elegant and unintrusive white outlines on a calm dark background. %))) Colorblast makes me feels like I'm at some child's playground and is actually exhausting. Ppl are wonderfully different, and nothing bests having lots of options to choose one most suitable for you!
2:22 I did some research and swapped my light mode and dark mode times. Previously, I had my light mode set to 7:00 AM and dark mode to 8:00 PM. Now my dark mode starts at 9:10 PM and my light mode time starts at 7:00 AM
There's one thing that was overlooked the entire video that, as a light-mode user, I find quite important: Screen brightness Yeah, of course light-mode is gonna cause eye-strain if you leave the screen brightness high, but I *DON'T* do that, I use light mode in a well lit room, with the screen brightness low, and that not only helps make text A LOT more readable to me (I have astigmatism, dark-mode makes it quite difficult for me to read) but it also doesn't give me eye-strain, because I'm not looking at a super-bright screen all the time, I'm looking at something that looks barely brighter than paper. I feel like dark-mode users are often forced to increase their screen brightness in order to be able to better read stuff, and as such, when something bright pops up on-screen, they're gonna complain that their eyes hurt, yeah, of course it's gonna hurt, you're forcing your pupils to constantly dilate while poiniting them directly at a screen with its brightness turned up!
white text against a black background is even easier to read at low lights than black text against a white background, what are you even on? You’re about as objectively wrong as possible.
I have asymmetrical astigmatism (aka irregular astigmatism) and light mode makes my entire screen bloom out the edges and the text becomes overwhelmed by the white light bleeding around the text, plus I get headaches. So, I am a dark-mode person. I've tried turning down the brightness, but it is just too dim then.
Sabrina forgot to mention one of the main critisms of her readability test that was mentioned on its RUclips post: The test's results seemed to be influenced significantly more by the order in which the light mode and dark mode questions were asked, with the second completion often resulting in a better score purely because the person being tested had gained experience with how the question worked during the previous completion.
@@eDoc2020 It still leads to results that don't reflect what would/should be expected. Someone who may be better at reading with light mode could still get a result that says that they're better with dark mode, if they did the light mode question first and then did better on the dark mode question because they learnt how the question works during the prior question.
@@AstroTheRabbit The order would likely affect the individual results. But if each half of the population gets a different order it should cancel out in the aggregated results. I'm not a statistician but I'm pretty sure this is true.
@@eDoc2020 From a scientific viewpoint, the experiment would be regarded as invalid as it does not test what it should be testing (which question came first vs. which mode is better for reading).
The studies I heard in the 90s (when it came to marketing) was that we read text faster black on white, and our brains have to take an extra moment to focus on white words on black background. So advertisers use black on white more often.
Omg, I've been in dark mode so long I forgot I even had it in dark mode, and I just turned it off. Willing to try at least for the duration of this video. Lol.
I have the same conditions and I really like dark mode. Since I switched I don't get headaches from using the computer anymore. Maybe it just depends on the person
hmmm, i have the exact eye problems (one in each eye) + lazy eye, and i just take my glasses off when driving if im having issues could it be the color contrast/font in the code you are having issues with?
@@omarpadilla8033 anything dark text on light background seem to be fine for me. I don't wear glasses unless I'm using a computer or using the phone for extended period of time though.
A small aperture increases depth of focus, the region where things are in focus. The converse is also true and that is why low f-stop lenses are used to produce bokeh.
My laptop has a feature that makes me change the colour of the light, and changing it to an orange hue has made a huge difference in eye strain. It doesn't affect my sleep in any way (nor for better or for worse), but avoiding the intense blue light helped so much with the feeling that looking at my laptop for too long, was like staring in to the sun.
I feel like I don’t understand that last bit. The new iPones features just offer more customization for those who want it. If a user wants to make their apps ugly and barely visible, that’s their choice. They have to make the active decision to do that. I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing? Or how this means that dark mode has gone too far?
I find it ironic that while iOS is at times maligned for the lack of customization it provides compared to Android, when Apple does make it customizable people complain about that as well.
I'm old, I remember the early 90s when we were switching from white-text-on-black-background DOS to black-text-on-white-background GUIs, there were lots of articles in tech magazines about how black-text-white-background was so much healthier and would cause so much less eye strain. Fast forward 30 years and everyone now claims that white-text-black-background is healthier and causes less eye strain. It's just like particular foods are said to be good for you, but no wait they're actually bad for you, hold on it turns out they're good for you again. You got the right answer: Do whatever works best for you and ignore what "everyone" says. If you wait long enough then what everyone says will change anyway.
As a frequent reader of webnovels where sometimes my reading session can take many hours... Your eyes get tired. And at that time only dark mode is the mode thats easy on eyes. A good dark mode can easily double the time your eyes support reading without feeling sleepy. I am sure there must be other productive areas its useful for as well such as programming. Oh and the battery saving helps extend your reading time when on a mobile device!
I struggle reading on dark mode, especially if it’s an article. I find the longer I keep reading, the more likely it is that when I look away I see bands moving upwards that look like window blinds. I’m not sure why that is, or why other people don’t seem to have that problem.
I was looking for this comment! Me too! As much as I visually like dark mode, it's not only useless for me, but actually disturbing. And it gets severe after a few seconds of reading white text and dark background, which made me unsubscribe from some mailing lists and literally avoid some webistes that only come in dark mode. The more I read, the loopier I get, and sometimes it happens after a few words alone. Same as you - I see horizontal white lines messing with my vision when I look away, but I have also described it as window blinds : ) So yeah, there is no best design that works for all.
When your eyes see something, the cells activate. When you see the text, the white color cells are activating in lines like the text lines. When they get tired, your eyes instead use the opposite color cells or no cells at all, so you see the dark bands.
Same for me - I can't use dark mode because I'll see banding in my vision for minutes after I stop reading. I've heard it may be to do with astigmatism, but I have no evidence to back that up.
I hate when youtubers do the thing at 5:45 with multiple videos overlapping making it seem like they are saying something you can't possibly understand (which is masqueraded as "boring stuff", when in fact it is what is actually being done and the rest of the video is actually just marketing BS around that).
Same here. I came here to learn, I clicked the video because I'm interested about this topic, so please stop omitting the nitty gritty details. They aren't boring! It's interesting! If someone doesn't care about that level of explanation, then they can just go to the next chapter.
I feel like my eyes strain more in dark mode than light. Something about trying to read light words against a dark background, it's like watching TV in a pitch black room.
@@davidlisteresqdisagree. Myself and many others I know get eye strain after watching TV for long periods in the dark. That's why many people put dim lighting behind the screen nowadays
@@davidlisteresq , no, that's the best way to watch movies (which are made to be watched in the dark environment of a movie theater), not regular tv programs (which are made to be viewed in the light environment of a normal living room).
Light mode also causes your pupils to shrink so if you have an astigmatism (like I do in my left eye) that can get occluded by your iris and cause the picture to be clearer
Just started this video, but felt the need to share this, after my astigmatism worsened, I had to switch to light mode to mitigate the symptoms. It was painful at first but overtime I got used to the brightness and wearing computer glasses helped. Weirdly, I felt more alert and productive since I did it. At night I would just massively tone down the brightness. Dark mode does have a lot of benefits, and I grew up with dark mode, but light mode is still an option for those who might need it.
Early computers (like pre-1980s) were all light characters (and later graphics) on dark backgrounds. Early computer graphics were mostly with vector displays, which cannot draw dark lines on light backgrounds. Once graphical user interfaces began to be researched, and we had high-resolution bitmap displays, researchers figured out that “page white” displays with black text was better.* Oh. As I was writing this, we got to 9:30… *In Doug Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos” in 1968, where the world first saw the computer mouse, it used a white background.
I absolutely LOVE dark mode, I have it absolutely everywhere and refuse to turn it off. Only place I can't turn it off is at work and even there I'm trying to get them to implement it
Depending on how locked down your IT stuff is, you might still be able to set custom colour schemes through the OS and your user profile. I found that Outlook etc were 1000x easier to deal with after I changed all the whitespace into greyspace.
I've been using a dark theme in my OS since 2012 or so, and for code editors since something like 2009. The fact that every time a website or product or OS starts talking about their great innovation of dark mode I roll my eyes.
Because one company added an optional feature to better support dark mode, it means that dark mode killed good design? That’s like saying custom backgrounds should be removed because users don’t consider how background colors affect design. I don’t get the thesis here.
Totally agree, what if you could apply the tint on light mode icons too, does light mode now kill good design? I really liked the video for clearing up the question if dark or light mode was better until that end. Kinda disappointed if I'm honest
Here's a copy of thoughts I posted in a root-level comment before watching the video: (tl;dr: Yes, Dark Mode did in fact do damage to UI design) Most modern light themes suck because they are basically dark theme designs, light-ified. And not just that, they really, really try to be LIGHT. And as a result, they don't look good. Before Dark Mode became a fad and obsession for people, app designers just did UI design and tried to make nice applications. After dark mode became a Thing, we had to differentiate between them. So we got a Theme dropdown and the options are Dark and... what would be a good contrast? A, ha! LIGHT theme, of course. Which is where the disaster started. Just as in the original Star Wars movies where you'd never hear the words "The Light Side of the Force" - there was just the Force, a vaguely benevolent thing, and then the Dark Side corruption of it. If UI design had stayed with UI Design and Dark Mode, life would have been good. But humans like their categories and contrasts, so they named the not-Dark theme Light Theme, which obviously guides design: The Dark theme is obsessively dark-hued, so the opposite should be obsessively light-hued, right? Well, no. It's what ended up happening, but it's actually a complete disaster. Why is that? It's because light and dark colorscapes aren't just equal but different. They're actively good at very different things. The thing dark themes are fundamentally amazing at is making color contrasts pop. There's a reason code editors are dark, and it's not just terminal heritage: You can make colors pop in lighter themes, but in a very dark theme you have much more freedom in choice of colors that really stand out. What's the weaknesses, then? Well, first, it's not actually easier to read (there's a pile of articles on what is easier to read, not going to repeat them here, see eg. Nielsen Group's page on Dark Mode), and the highest contrast tends to make text a bit less legible due to the background and text bleeding into each other undesirably. This effect, as far as I understand, is worse with light-on-dark than dark-on-light contrast pairings. What's the design sensibility these inform? What wee see in apps like Discord and Visual Studio Code: UI elements are just flat slabs of color distinguished by different hues, and smart use of smallish contrasts make things nice, clean and readable, because color pops. Light gray text on dark gray background looks fantastic in dark mode. What's a not-dark color scheme good and bad at? Well, it's comparatively bad at making colors pop. It's not that it can't be done, but you have a bit less freedom in choice and need to employ a lot more intense colors - my light VSCode theme uses very, very intense neon blues to highlight code snippets as blue, for example, and this isn't bothersome at all. Not-dark ("normal") themes aren't generally amazing at distinguishing small differences in contrast. What are they good at, then? Contrast, baby. You can go absolutely ham on the starkest contrasts you can get and it looks good in a way it never would on dark mode. Stark black text on really light background is a treat for the eyes. It's also much better at drawing materials, shapes, surfaces. Drop shadows are gorgeous and make things pop and stand out without being overbearing. Strong linework is much more at home in the light than it is in the dark - in the dark, it pops out too much, making subtle gradients obtrusive instead of just informative. Contrast differences are enough in the dark. With a Normal theme, you can make things have some substance, and deliberately draw lines between different parts of the UI. They won't stand out annoyingly, they'll just fade into the background but give a nice, structured feel to the UI, the way shadows do in real life. Normal themes can also incorporate color into the UI in a more balanced-feeling way because they don't make colors poop with the salience of a floodlight in your face. Finally, "light" doesn't have to be "bright as the Sun" - the best "light" themes don't try to be light, they just try to be good UIs that don't actively try to be dark. Pop open Excel (the old theme before the latest redesign), if you have it installed. Strong lines all over the place to delineate different UI elements, the ribbon shadowed to float. Even splashes of color or simple contrast differences have border linework added them because that's how light looks good. The styles menu is very even-keeled in the "colorful" light theme - change the theme to "Black" and all of the colours scream at you. It's less hideous than a dark theme that's been lightified, but still bothersome and in your face way too much. You'd design your UI elements differently if dark was the baseline. And that is where many light themes for modern apps like make their mistake: They take dark design and dunk it in a can of white paint to lighten it up, and it usually looks ugly as sin, because direct translation betweem the two paradigms doesn't work. Normal/Colorful design to dark design can, somewhat, but it's suboptimal, and taking a dark design and whitewashing it is near invariably hideous. To be excellent, you have to handcraft that stuff. Take inspiration from the dark design, why not, but the design has to really "walk in the sun", not just be dumped in a bucket of white paint. As one more recent example, check Obsidian's default theme. The contrast ratio between the titlebar and page area/active tab is apparently mathematically the same in both light and dark themes. Is it experientially the same? Not even close. The stark black of the dark theme stands out in glorious clarity and lends the UI good structure, with clear separation of active and inactive tabs. Light theme? Uh, are these a different color at all? The same math just doesn't make whitewashed themes and dark themes the same.
@@Komatik_ I think what you’ve outlined is closer to saying that lazy design harmed good design, which is true. Back when dark mode used to be the new thing it might have even been the opposite. Dark mode would’ve been just “light” theme in black paint. The true killer is in laziness. Although the fracturing of user preferences (light v.s dark) can be an indirect contributor to that, it is also not inherently the fault of dark theme. If UI designers properly leaned into the strength of both, it wouldn’t have been an issue.
Good lord, the fact that "back in the day, screens were black with bright text" is now a "history fact" is beyond depressing, lol. I'm a programmer and one of the "old school" programmers who got their start on DOS which makes me about 132 in computer years, but one of the things I routinely site when I have this conversation with folks, is that if you look at MOST of software that is the kind of professional software that people who use it are using ALL.DAY.LONG. - things like coders use like Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, or Graphics and Video folks like the Adobe Suite, or the 3D modelling folks over at AutoCAD with 3ds MAX and Maya - all of them are some variation of dark mode by default, and in some cases they don't even have a light mode. Not to mention I'm convinced that anyone who codes in a light mode IDE must be some sort of psychopath :)
That was always one of the biggest issues I’d have in CompSci classes at college (and ICT lessons in school): Every single lesson would begin with me having to manually reset every single application back to light mode so I could use it. (Eventually, we just collectively agreed I’d be assigned one computer that would be set to default to light mode.)
do you wear glasses/contacts? do you have the correct prescription? I have astigmatism too and read dark mode fine. But you're right about bright light making things easier to read, as it was explained to me by an eye dr, the bright light has the same effect as squinting, shrinking the aperture of your eyes helping to focus the light into your eyes. Also it took decades until I found a doctor that got my prescription right so I didn't get headaches from my glasses.
@@teaoanimar not the person you replied to but also someone with astigmatism who has never been able to read dark themes, I can definitely say there has never been a problem with my glasses prescription and that I get the same issues with my glasses on or off (I often use my phone in bed close to my face without glasses on)
I just posted this on another comment. I feel the same thing when looking at a word file or something for too long, the white background blooms into the letters and makes them blurry
Personally I have much more eye strain with dark mode on. My eyes are watering and after I look away I see bright spots in my vision field, right where the text was. While in white mode I don’t feel any discomfort at all.
If only there's something in between. Personally I like working on text/code editors on solarised light / dark theme. It's less harsh because they use warm tones, as if you have an orange lamp over your screen. I have astigmatism too, and code editors are often dark mode by default, which I would usually change to something like solarised dark or something with warm tones to help make the text easier to read for me.
@@cassinipanini I think high contrast is what makes dark mode difficult for people with astigmatism. For me, illuminated white text or yellow text on black background tends to glow which makes the words fuzzy. Solarised dark uses dark gray instead for black for background and off white instead of white for text, reducing the contrast and reducing the glowy fuzz around the text. Green text on black is also readable for me, I don't know what's the science behind this.
From my perspective, dark is one of the tweeks I usually need to improve workflow. It turn out that taking brightness from visual field enables additional information stand out. But it doesn't mean you're done there. If you're dealing too much information, you need to create perceptual clues that helps you to recognize where a desired information could be (and this process often will happen even before you realizer what were you looking for). So you need to use collor palletes and shapes to isolate different purpose areas. Use distinct colors to signal a given intention to an action button, link or text (or just help sort out keywords like in code). Typography, I don't know that much, but I will always manually set it whenever I can. The basic idea is, reduce information as much as possible and then add information carefully, being sure to improve the overall experience and avoiding implementing so much information that those clues stop being useful.
I have a weird middle ground in this debate because all my apps are in dark mode, or if the option is available, "gray mode" which is not as black but still dark. Pure dark mode is kinda uncomfortable sometimes. In sharp contrast my home and lock screen is like a kaleidoscope of a bunch of bright colors.
I'm a designer and about 20 years ago my eye doctor asked if I was a designer. I said yeah how did you know? He said because you people never blink... are you afraid you'll blink and your design will be gone? I didn't want to tell him yeah, kinda. Haha! But for 20 years now I am very aware when I'm staring and not blinking while working!
My friends use light mode discord in school so if a teacher glances at their screen he or she wont notice that it's discord, and you can also switch to google classroom or docs without the screen flashing from dark to bright.
I love that holy shit
My guy is a quiet genius.
which genius came up with that.
Heaven forbid your friend use class time for, you know, school.
@@kev3d If they get the work done who cares if they goof off imo
"when we use our phones, we blink shockingly less than usual" great, now i'll be blinking manually for the rest of the video
You mean rest of the day. That might just be me.
I saw an article that says because of the way our eyes move it affects how we read on a computer versus reading a book. It is easier to read a book.
Fun fact: you're always blinking manually. Blinking is a learned behaviour, not a reflex or instinctive behaviour. That's why babies barely blink.
@@foolishlyfoolhardy6004is that why you blink when the wind is blowing to?
@@Tongokai you learn how, yes.
darkmode and lightmode being both available are important for accessibility reasons. being extremely sensitive to light myself, i cannot read sites that don't have it well often. my mom on the other hand cannot read darkmode as easily, and always uses lightmode when possible
Ye i’m dayblind. The amount of squinting dark mode has saved me (and thus exhaustion, and wrinkles)…. Is insane.
Dark reader extension is fantastic, you rarely get a site that doesn't work with it
Having a global switch that's respected across all software and websites is so important, but so often overlooked.
Yea as someone who has palinopsia, I physically can’t read white text on dark background.
@@AllMightyLordOfClams Meanwhile, for me, dark mode is much harder to read because I have astigmatism! It really is important to have both
5:50
NO, NO, ITS NOT BORING! GIVE ME MY STATISTICS. I WANT MY STATISTICS.
EXACTLY
That's what Im saying as well
Samsies!
YEAH GIVE US THE NERD FUEL
People always skip over explanations and stuff like this... WHY
If there’s one thing I wish people understood about accessibility and usability in general, it’s that there is no one best design.
I feel like all the accessibility designs sucks. I would like to be able to control my background color my font color and my font style inline size. I guess that's too much to ask for as there is only dark mode or bright mode with crappy font options and no color options.
If I could give you multiple thumbs up, I would. I was involved in an accessibility working group a while back and got to meet lots of people with very contrasting needs. I knew they varied; I didn't realise they varied _that_ much.
@@taradid409 There should be more options, and they should never be behind a paywall, because that amounts to a disability tax.
I'm cool with having more font options and color options. But do we really need more background color options? Bright and dark mode pretty much fits all sorts of situations.
If there are more background options, I feel like it would be popular for 2 or 3 weeks, then people would go back to bright or dark mode again.
@@ralphfi9591 We definitely do. For example: Some people (particularly those with astigmatism) benefit from a grey background to reduce the effects of halation or bloom. Meanwhile people who have to read using their perifferal vision (eg stargardt disease) need as much contrast as possible (ie white text on a pure black background). There are many other use-cases that can, and should, be addressed by simply having the options available.
There's a hidden unsupported feature in Wikipedia to enable Dark Mode, but it mostly just inverts the colors of everything on the page and attempts to invert-invert any images that were messed up. I use it all the time and love it!
Ohh, please share your secrets! How do you access that?
There’s also wikiwand
Yeah, I _definitely_ need that. I go down way too many rabbit-holes on there an end up with text-block shaped sunspots every time.
Vivaldi browser has a "filter invert" tickbox at the bottom that does that to any page you want.
@@spelcheak the company that takes the free labour of wikipedia editors and uses it to make money by showing ads and selling user data?
10:06 If letters/paper is light mode, we had dark mode way earlier: chalkboards.
Paper and palm-leaf manuscripts which would be "light theme" are both older than chalkboard. You could however argue that cave paintings were dark mode depending on the rock that was used.
@@lolo_o4309 Our planet can essentially be reduced down to a bright spec on a black background amongst many other bright specs. Dark mode.
Well then what about stone/clay tablets?
@@braynjohnson4302 Gray mode?
@@lolo_o4309 loved the cave self answer, and now seeing the comments about clay and gray mode know I'm thinking that sumerian had the OG sepia
I just switched youtube to lightmode after using darkmode for years just to see the difference. It literally looks like an entirely new website. I switched back with the speed of a toddler at bedtime.
I'll also be doing that 😂
Is that supposed to be fast (like its bedtime so they get all hyper) or slow (because they drag thier feet with getting ready for bed)?
@@tryoxissI’m wondering too 😅😅
My mom showed me something on her phone yesterday and it took me some time to recognise the app because it was in light mode. It was Instagram! I didn't recognize Instagram because it wasn't dark!
@@tryoxiss you tell them its bed time and try to pick them up to bring them to bed and the slippery little creatures dash away with the quickness. it is the last push before the inevitable.
As an architect, I’ve noticed that a white or black background hurts my eyes more and instead our default background is actually dark blue, like CAD, which is much easier to look at all day
I'm going to try that
Exactly. Like if this is actually a war between sun brigt eye burning light white and death dark black. No it is not. It is a matter of not over doing things. Just do not use pure white and do not use pure dark. Use a good contrast on text. Make the text readable in size and type. It _is_ allowed to use actual colors on a color screen too.
@@AntiAtheismIsUnstoppable yes exactly, the in between dark blue or gray is super helpful for eye strain instead of pure black with white text
I love a good grey theme, that's not all black. Like blender or that discord one.
I grew to love Dracula themes, which is a dark purple with green and orange highlights. It is a site dedicated to creating the same consistent easy to look at theme for every application under the silicon
I felt it when you said "argument with friends turned to obsession"
"They're my friends, so I'm gonna do the kind thing... AND SPEND WAY TOO LONG TRYING TO PROVE THEM WRONG"
That's how you know you've got a real one.
@@AlneCraft If not to prove a point, then why do it at all?
@@ms_chit's called interacting
My reason for using light mode wasn't even mentioned: eye burn-in. Lines of bright text on a dark background leave afterimages for quite a long time, which messes with my vision and I find uncomfortable. Light backgrounds have a much more even afterimage, because even dark text is still mostly light space, and therefore don't leave noticable artifacts.
I have the same issue. Even if I might prefer the dark mode aesthetics, the text afterimage is so intense and annoying there's just no way I can use it. I wonder if anyone will ever determine what's different about eyes like ours.
Wouldn't using less harsh colors be better than? like not full black to white?
Lol! I get the opposite effect. Dark mode makes no after image while white mode makes the after image of a white square sooo annoying!
Yeah I think this whole issue plays into us not blinking while using screens. I don't usually notice any artifacts after using screens I don't think
It happens to me both ways, so I've tried to cater to myself using a lower contrast setup. But I also have a touch of light sensitivty anyway.
the reason i use dark mode is because bright lights or the colour white just hurts my eyes, like actual pain.
Your screen brightness and contrast settings are wrong. Unless you have a genetic defect which is possible.
@@killerkonnat well probably a genetic defect, since its not only just a screen that hurts my eyes when its bright. its also when its bright outside or just anything bright.
@@killerkonnat thing is that that simply doesn't happen if you have dark mode. There are no "wrong settings" AFAIK.
You should try something like f.lux. (Or whatever the phone equivalent would be if you primarily use a smartphone.) It sets a warmer color profile on your screen which avoids a lot of eye strain. Between that and brightness settings that aren't significantly brighter than your environment, you can lessen eye strain by a ton. I have really sensitive eyes to the point that I often have to squint outside even on overcast days but not only do light themes not hurt my eyes when sitting at my computer but dark themes actually result in issues because they're so much darker then my environment so looking away from my screen on sites with dark themes actually hurts my eyes now.
@@Sirevanaccactually it happens with me. I physically can’t read white text on black background. It all just blurs into lines of white and I get a headache.
I'm firmly in the "all personalisation is a good thing" camp on this one. I use dark mode because I think it looks prettier (mostly)
I think usually dark mode looks horrible, in particular on youtube, but that's not really the point, the point is whether the text has enough contrast and is easily readable in size and type. I like the flow better in light mode, I don't think most companies care at all about dark mode all they do is they invert the colors which looks terrible, and so I agree with the host here, dark mode is about horrible design and then selling it as revolutionary and good for health and battery life.
@@AntiAtheismIsUnstoppable yeah fair enough, i agree that it's entirely aesthetic, the supposed benefits are basically nonexistent. some websites have terrible dark mode, i agree, but some are nice imo. especially code editors, people have made actually nice dark themes for them.
@@KingJellyfishII Design is like food. Some like spicy food, some do not. And some like light light mode, some like dark. I am not against dark mode, but to sell what is a theme as something sent from God, I mean... Let people have the choice that is good, everyone is happy to have their own choice, and built it into the OS itself too I am very fine with that too, I am all for choice. But it's the over selling I do not like.
Actual good design is to me, to not over do things. Don't use very bright white, don't use completely black black. Use good contract on text and a good readable font. And make the design follow the four design principles too, such that it is in sync, no matter if it's darker or lighter. And then do accessability testing.
@@AntiAtheismIsUnstoppable I 100% agree
@@KingJellyfishII My code editor actually has a theme which is neither light nor dark, but in the middle :) It's a tidbit pastel red and very friendly to look at - for me :) But I did spend an awful lot of time to find the right font, to find the right syntax highlighting colors which have the best contrast and are still nice to look at. My eye sight is not the best, contrast is what is most important for me. But I agree with you, very light white is not good to look at.
The reason the book analogy is bad is because the book doesn’t emit light so it scales linearly with the light around u.
This is a very good point
also the reason why I prefer dark mode on emitting devices (smartphone, laptop, desktop) but prefer lightmode on non-emitting ones (electronic paper like amazon kindle)
auto brightness on the phone....
@@bleack8701 still emits light tho, and not everyone has that one. It also doesn't really try to stay the same brightness as your surroundings.
White paper is meant to be highly reflective. How is reflected light different than emitted light in your opinion? It can be both be to bright or to dark. White printer paper can just be too bright in direct sunlight (I guess that is why lots of books do not have completely white paper). Light is light in the end of the day.
i always use light mode for work/study related stuff because ive noticed it keeps me more alert. then i switch to dark mode when im trying to relax and wind down.
That's actually... Smart.
Yes! People hate when they see that I code in light mode, but I tried switching back-and-forth dark/light mode, and I do feel that it is easier for analyzing code, comparing text and keeping me awake.
But also might be that I am old and never got onto the Dark Mode trend.
And that's exactly opposite for me, that battling over pain of white screens takes about 30-40% of my background resources =)
10/10 on that ad. no seriously. i didn't even realize it until about 2/3rds into it. felt more like product placement than watching a commercial and i think thats the perfect way to include a sponsor!
I use Eye Comfort mode on every device. This really helped. My night mode filter is set to 75% on Windows, maximum on my phone. You'll get used to it really quickly, you can't go without it after using it a few days.
I've been using f.lux on PC since the year 26 BC. For the past few years I've also used a program called Dimmer to make the screen darker than the lowest brightness setting.
Omg I've been using it since I first got a phone. I can't imagine my life without it
You really get used to it. When I look at pics I've seen on my phone on other people's phones and everything is so... blue. It feels strange
Ikr? It happens to me too and it feels so weird! Like im living in a warmer world hahah@@BaroTheMadman
it makes my eyes hurt
I was one of the only web devs in my office who used light mode. I was nicknamed "Database Admin" (database, for short). It still hurts.
Haha
_Simpsons_ reference?
Light mode is just fine. Your coworkers are jerks.
eyes still hurt?
My eyes still hurt. It was justified. >:)
Dark Mode and Light Mode being a toggle is actually good for design of websites, because it has forced many projects and companies to create more cohesive and company wide Design Systems and Rubrics. Also, again we're talking about the personal aspect here, more customization the better, not everyone who uses an Android device goes as crazy with customization as i do, but they are allowed to. Customization is also incredibly important to address different disabilities, there are many forms of impaired vision and the more options given allows end users who may be disabled in some way to fix something a designer may not have known because they're able bodied.
I find it weird that people who use Android phones seemingly always find a reason to talk about it
I mean even if iOS or Android was mentioned casually in the video, it’s hardly part of the point of the video
@@himynameisryan It directly relates to what I'm talking about, more customization is always a good thing and the goat (Sabrina) brings up the new feature in iOS which was touted as groundbreaking when it's basic levels of customization that they should've had for a while. As a Software Engineer who does work for accessibility, many designers can easily forget about how their design will impact disabled people
@@buffet_time but like I said
She only mentions iOS 18 as like a side thing in the video
The Android vs iOS debate is unimportant to the topic of the video
Yet you see a need to bring it up
Also every person with life altering disabilities I know or have seen on the internet sings Apple’s praises for their extensive accessibility settings
For example on my 15 pro max the accessibility section in settings is twice as long as the one my s24 ultra
@@himynameisryan ya no Apple consistently goes against their own published accessibility guidelines and industry standards in many products. And let alone that, the lack of customization inherently is worse for accessibility, the more you can change especially when we're talking about core things like colors, where things are placed, the sizes of things, etc the better.
And this is ignoring Apples consistent state of being far behind in Web Spec in comparison to Chromium and Firefox based browsers which often includes new accessibility features, or causing issues in websites because of their inability to adhere to standards which ends up hurting the accessibility of the same site on Safari. At the company I work at we constantly experience this where edge case bugs that don't exist in any Chromium or Firefox browser exist on iOS (because Apple forces all browsers to be skins of Safari on iOS) or Desktop Safari.
Still that's besides the point, more customization is always better to allow for workarounds for disabled people, which is why playing games on PC where you can connect either directly or with cheap X to USB adapters any controller or input that exists throughout history and get it working. Sony has done nothing and is wholly inaccessible as a platform, Xbox has a few really quality modular controllers but falls short in it being a locked down OS but is still doing something. But the customization of a real desktop is what allows many people I know personally to enjoy games given severe mobility issues.
Companies like Apple who have poor design in general that feels 10 years out of date consistently and have very little customization will always be worse for accessibility.
Don't care to continue this further as it's pointless, but sidenote Apple should stop participating in orchestrating coups and working with warlords to secure resources and having slave labor to make more profit /shrug
@@himynameisryan I find it weird that you're getting so defensive over someone using the more customizable operating system as an example for customization being good for users.
As a graphics designer, I’ve always just been used to dark mode. As you mentioned, it allows us to focus on the workpiece and is also critical for me when comparing tonal values or works that require color accuracy.
As for apple’s decision in iOS 18, I think this is more a reactionary move since competitors are offering customizability which goes against the hard-coded stylization of Apple GUIs in general. So in a way, it’s Apple buckling to pressure because the public perception is that their GUIs are outdated. Don’t know is if this was the best answer to that though.
I heard a story about a company using an employees work as a graphics designer to train AI to take his job. The AI can basically do what the graphics designer could and the company would save a lot of money. Is this something you are concerned about a as graphics designer?
@@Toby_RUclips978 in that particular example, if it’s done without the knowledge of the designer, that’s definitely an ethical issue. As for AI used for design in general, it depends. Most AI-generated designs are still buggy but the mistakes are often overlooked by the general audience because the fidelity of design is not what’s important; rather, it’s the use of imagery to achieve specific goals (ie. engagement, replies, views, etc.)
So the challenge to designers is differentiation and constant evolution. At some point, it will be similar to how painters had to differentiate from photographers through stylization, abstraction, etc. I believe these are things artists that will always place the artist ahead of the AI curve - but at the same time, more than ever, protections need to be put in place to prevent their work from being used unethically. It will have to fall to some oversight committee to prevent people from taking content from curated websites without consent… but this is easier said than done. People can always pull images off google search and use it to feed algorithms.
But to return to your question, yes it’s concerning, but at least in my field where my designs are applied, I don’t see it totally replacing me. If anything, I’m more concerned with Adobe’s monopoly and their unethical practices. But that’s a different issue altogether.
@@mikukumiku Thank you for the reply. I guess only time will tell. In the example I provided it was done without the knowlegde of the designer. The only positive thing about that situation is that the youtube video he made about it became popular, so he earned a couple bucks off of that. I cant remember his name but I should benable to find it by searching: I lost my job to AI.
@@mikukumiku I found out his channel name is “Nsdestraight”. You can watch his 4 month old video about the topic if you want.
I'm a programmer, so I have to read a lot of digital text during the day in daylight. When I started, I was a dark mode user, but at some point I noticed how my eyes were always very strained and I had to take breaks for my eyes, and that's when I switched. It's just so much more comfortable.
That is also my experience. The white text in dark mode produces halos for me, which causes my eyes to tear. I read that it is due to having small irregularities in the cornea or lens. I am now using blue filter mode in combination with light mode.
light theme is scientifically better for your eyes, especially if you are in a well lit room which you should be when reading or programing.
I switched from dark to light years ago, and switched back...but this makes me want to try light mode again
What I'm currently doing is switching to light mode in quite bright environments, e.g. with lots of sunlight etc. Otherwise, I'm still using dark mode (that may change, don't know though).
I adore the vibes of this video. The clarity of thought to ask questions of your questions, the human stakes of proving your friends wrong, the tight script presenting the results of tons of research and academic results without dragging. I found this channel while working on weekend projects like a year ago and those projects have been completely shelved for more than 6 months, but this has got me feeling motivated to dust them back off
I was dark mode for a long time now, but recently tried out light mode. I found right away that not only could I read much better with light mode, but I was able to run my brightness lower. I have always used 100% brightness on every screen because I felt I needed it to enhance the contrast for reading, but once I started using light mode I could run my brightness at 15% sometimes and still see what I was doing. When trying dark mode again, I am unable to see the screen at lower brightnesses. I also find I am on my phone WAY less at night with light mode on, simply because of the dreaded flash bang effect.
I was expecting the title of the video to be the main focus, rather than an after thought based on Apple being bad at customization.
same lol, i have no idea why customization options need to be explained. not everything needs to be disguised under the hood of "accessibility"
pretty sure the first title (like for the first couple hours) was something similar to "Dark mode vs Light mode". and they changed it to something more catchy to engage curiosity
this video sucks so badly. i used the bad recommendations addon for firefox to make sure this channel never gets recommended again. the over-compressed valley girl voice with its intense overuse of fry register is so intensely annoying. i've paused the video after two minutes, tried going on for another 30 seconds, and then just turned it off. after reconsidering, i went to the time stamps to see if i can find the buried lede. instead, i was met with someone's middle life crisis. crappy memes from twitter 10 years ago. the bird site is dead. get over it. miss me with that sht
Customisation is not really an advantage for many/most people. And Apple was supposed to be the better choice for those "rest of us".
@@Axel_Andersen Customization is better for everyone, even if many/most people don't use it. Character creation is þe best example. Would you raþer be forced to play Skyrim as a Nord or choose to play Skyrim as a Nord?
I started having double vision issues a few years ago. My optometrist couldn't identify a problem, and so I started searching the internet for it (I know, sketchy thing to do, but I was desperate). I stumbled across a bunch of posts on reddit about people with bad astigmatism who were noticing that dark mode was causing massive eye strain, and who recommended switching back to light mode. I've been using light mode ever since, and have had no issues with double vision. So no, dark mode isn't always better for your eyes.
I also have astigmatism and find dark mode hurts my eyes more than light mode. I find it odd when people say it’s better for your eyes
Same here, dark mode makes it hard for me to see because of my astigmatism. And as she said, if you find light mode too bright... Then try to brighten your surroundings.
I have no eye issues, at most I'm a light sensitive, but dark mode has also always caused strain for me and is so much harder for me to read.
I've been having a similar issue lately and been using dark mode for years. I'm gonna switch and see if it makes a difference.
Edit: I just switched windows to light mode and oh boy will this take getting used to again
Guess I'm keeping my double vision.
I think other was a missed reason for dark mode.
Screens universally got brighter so light mode became unpleasant.
with CRTs and old LCDs the brightest they got was like... 70 lumens. Now they are in the 300s, and in HDR, possibly over 1000.
White backgrounds that were normal and fine in the past really did become flash bangs to people. If light modes had a more parchment like brightness in the background to keep the brightness down, people would find it to not as blinding, and light modes would be more used.
This makes sense to me! When I’m using the Kindle app I have it set to that sepia-tone background
Sometimes, I wish displays would return to barely backlit LCD screens.
honestly, if more apps and websites had a more orange toned theme for their light mode, id use them WAYYYY more. but with how BLINDING of whites most sites use are, its just easier on my eyes, even WITH astigmatism
I think certain colour schemes look good on LCDs and others on oleds. I do not like semi dark grey colour schemes on oleds, but they are perfect on LCDs. LCDs give a very matte casual imperfect, but perfectly readable impression while oleds are much more vibrant especially smartphones maybe matte oleds plastic oleds will be a perfect middle ground between the LCD and the glossy glass oiled.
@@bluexroses414 Sepia is the true way, if only we could have it everywhere....
this is your first video I've ever seen and I absolutely _LOVE_ your editing and filming/style!!! I'm sure it takes a long time, which is extremely impressive, but it's also very engaging and entertaining---solid 10/10
The last part about companies adding useless things to their products just for the sake of it struck home. When I got my new phone, the setup sequence couldn't continue unless I installed some random games and apps like TikTok, which I don't even use. I miss having operating systems work as utilities rather than branded advertisement devices.
My phone "easy" setup forces you to install google pay, like.. what ?
Thankfully you can turn off the notification for the reminder and just use it "partially" setup, but holy shit, that's the kind of shit that makes me understand why my grandma doesn't try to learn new tech anymore.
Yeah it is a real shame that only a few companies like Google and Nothing gives an actually clean setup experience with no bloatware preinstalled
@@slavboii420That's why I still use custom ROM in 2024 for every devices in my house.
That's why I use custom ROMs on my phones and Linux on my PCs and laptops
yeah, grapheneOS has been working well, and the majority of the bloatware is stuff I installed myself(like google play store). tho I've heard good things about calyxOS for the non google Pixel android users
I'm an autistic person with sensitive senses. To me, light mode is so overwhelming. I deal with it as best I can when I have no option. When I switch from a light mode app to dark mode app, I feel the stress in body go down.
Interesting, I'm exactly, and extremely, the opposite! I won't read anything presented in dark mode for than a couple of minutes.
As another autistic person, I prefer light mode over dark mode for two reasons. First, it is what I am familiar with growing up learning to use Word, PowerPoint, and many softwares in light mode. Second, the hype around dark mode such as on Reddit seems like a silly arbitrary social rule to me.
@@notthatcreativewithnames ,
Not all autistic people have all the same problems. Your sense of bright light may not be that sensitive. Personally, my sense of smell is not that sensitive but everything else seems to be very sensitive. It's very stressful when I encounter loud noises, bright light, and ect. Bright light from a screen from a device is very stressful for me. It's not because of all the hype. It is because of my autism and nothing else. It's not because I don't get used to the brightness. If that was the case, I wouldn't have this anymore because I use a computer with light mode software all day.
@@QQuandaryI don't think they're talking about you, but how many ppl on social media love dark mode and think it's weird if you don't
@@calimorale9880 , This hype reminds of the gluten free health hype. People were switching to a gluten free diet and thought they were eating a healthier diet. In reality, the gluten free didn't help them with a healthier diet unless they had celiacs or were allergic to gluten. Same issue here. At least, I get a benefit from some of the dark mode software like someone I know that has celiacs get a good selection of food. It's weird how that works out.
I have sensitive eyes, so the sudden pop ups of light really hurt
And to all the people trying to say to me ways that will ‘fix’ this, dark mode already does that, so just stfu, I couldn’t care less
Whereas my sensitive eyes cause the exact opposite.
@Nerdy&Quirky please address this comment
@@TheInfintyithGoofball address what? It’s simply because the eyes need to constrict, due to the sudden burst of light. The sudden burst of light means it all goes through the more relaxed iris, because my eyelids are not faster than light
I'm sure that's pretty annoying... :(
When it's nighttime I have to use a special app to make the brightness of my screen darker than my device usually allows you to make it with setting
But I use light mode for everything anyway
Same
I don’t know if this is consistent with your content because this is the first video I’ve ever scene of this channel but the editing is done beautifully how did you do that?☠️☠️
As an editor that works with text all the freaking time, dark mode allows me to work way longer stints than light mode. It also does help me not to crunch to the latest hours, since it keeps me less awake than light mode does. When I need light for visual comfort, I brighten the room, not the screen. Also... I don't care much about colours on the screen. My favourite preset for Windows UI used to be "cloudy day".
"Dark mode make me sleepier which helps with my overwork habits"
Bro, just set an alarm.
I use light mode in day at whatever brightness is comfy dark mode at night with low brightness
@@rainermist2357 if dark mode works it works. Exact alarm-timed hours isn't for everyone
@@rainermist2357 "Reducing Blue Light eases the brain naturally into night time." "Bro, get a loud noise out of nowhere."
I cannot use light mode. I have very sensitive eyes and always have to use the minimum brightness settings on devices, often even using accessibility settings to reduce the brightness below the minimum. Dark mode is so amazing for me. if I have too much white on my screen for too long my eyes hurt. if I accidentally turn my brightness up and don’t realise I can get a headache and have no idea why until I realise I accidentally turned my brightness up. Not offering dark mode can make me just not use a product.
"OMG
He is just like me fr"
But seriously someone understands.
I am prone to light sensitive migraines
Same
Same here; my screens are all extra dark, every OS & app set to dark mode, and I use the dark background/large font "Read Mode" in Firefox for every website with significant amounts of text. I can't read anything on Wikipedia without it.
yes, light mode actually hurts to look at. To me it's not really a debate of what's better it's an accessibility feature.
And this is precisely why the Mac has had an “invert” screen mode for decades. Dark mode is fundamentally just an improved version of that, where hues don’t get inverted, too.
Similarly, many video and hoots editing programs were “dark mode” long before that was a thing, because you didn’t want a bright user interface drowning out a dimly lit scene you were editing.
Both of those are functional examples of why light-text-on-dark-background has real uses. The modern dark mode obsession, in turn, has nothing to do with needs, it’s just a fad…
Coming from UX designer, yeh agreed most studies I've read say :
Dark Text on a Light background (light mode) = less strain on your eyes for longer text like paragraphs.
Light text on dark BG (Dark mode) = Good for shorter text like headers (also tends to be more attention-grabbing).
As in most cases with design context is key.
dark text on light background is way more annoying for me personally
Coming from the point of a user. If the background is very bright, then I will not use the application. I have run into more than one ux designer whose response to my wish for a dark variant is that I am wrong (for one reason or another). I think it's pretty obvious that many users have a pretty strong preference for one or the other. I'm pretty tired of hearing that a website I completely skipped over because it was too bright to comfortably read somehow has good design and I just don't get it.
Light text on dark BG (Dark mode) = migraine
If I come across something defaulted to dark mode and can't find a way to turn it off, I won't use that thing.
I'm not sure I understand - are you arguing against personalisation at the end? The new options being added to allow you to tint your icons how you like aren't intended to serve some sort of accessibility purpose (though they may find one), but to allow users to pesronalise how their iOS looks according to their own tastes. Possibly to match the case they've put it in. There was some interesting analysis in the video, but the added on conclusion and title are kind of jarring, and feels like a strange thing to target. It's good when you're allowed to adjust things to your tastes. Computers typically used to let you do it a lot more than they do now.
Yeah, it feels like she hates personalisation and wants everything controlled by some grand distant designers.
Android allows you to personalise everything or at least so much that it feels that way.
Icon personalization has been a thing for at least 3 years could be more. I used a Huawei for a long time and it was easy to personalise my phone back than.
Stopped using the brand when they had to switch to their own ios.
Thanks to Thrump😑...
Huawei was such a good in between good quality for a reasonable amount of money.
@@KoishiteAkuma90oh believe me, it was a thing MUCH before 3 years
Even my dinky android phone about 6-7 years ago had the option to manually add icon packs or icons
Except the only "personalization" option is "pick your single favorite color and make literally everything that." I hate that, and I hate that it's where design is headed. Windows is like that now too. Everything is just solid black, white, and One Color, As A Treat. Whatever happened to themes, designed by real designers? Whatever happened to textures, gradients, and variety among the things you use? Not every user is that one girl you knew in high school whose entire personality was the color pink or purple and went out of her way to buy only things that were that color!
@@stevethepocket if you want personalization, buy android. case closed.
Me: Dark mode actually works well and doesn't strain your eyes and stuff
Sabrina: *Yesn't* .
Me: my eyes are strained by dark mode in VS Code.
@@edgarwalk5637 You can actually customize all of that! In your settings.json (for user or workspace) you can change the colors of everything. You can even do it in cpp_properties.json if you want conditional coloring/highlighting based on any number of things like language of the file - maybe you want c variables to be red and c++ to be blue. Everything you can set in settings.json files are also changeable in the settings menu. It's a highly customizable lightweight-IDE. I just presented this to my organization as a replacement for Eclipse since it has native Git integration and extensions are so good.
Well it's usually also poor design and terrible looking design, because what they mostly do is they invert the colors which looks terrible. But... they can sell it as dark mode which will get more customers. Dark mode is about clicks and customers from PR - not about good design or the individual user at all. It's basically a hoax. But I must admit that Apple does one thing good: They can sell pooh as if it is gold.
Light mode strains my eyes, Dark mode doesn't. That's all I need
Maybe buy better screen
....or just don't stare at a screen all day
For me it’s the opposite tbh. I physically can’t read text on dark mode
@@JoHiPe like not work on a computer?
did you consider adjusting the brightness?
Windows 95 came with multiple colour scheme presets for the system colours, and you could customize them however you like, so it's been weird seeing those get reduced to just 2 modes.
The 2 modes are usually for phone users tho
yes this exactly.. i will never stop being mad about this.
No shortage of customisation options on Linux. I've got my MATE desktop looking like a weird hybrid of Windows 98 and XP.
exactly! came here to mention my weird purple/orange macOS-like Plasma config
That's right. But Microsoft didn't care to develop dark visual styles for Windows XP… and now we're stuck with light mode for classic Win32 apps. Even Royale Noir theme has light grey background for dialog boxes and white background for main document surface, like in Notepad. In Windows 10 and 11, only apps using the new WinUI controls have dark mode support.
I just wanted to say that this is the first video of yours that has ever popped up for me, I watched it expecting a BuisnessInsider-style history of dark mode, and came away utterly gobsmacked. The incredible level of production, amazing editing, and your wonderful, hilarious and intelligent commentating, not to mention the extraordinary level of research and attention to detail made this video a brilliant watch. Thank you so much for showing your passion and creativity through a video that could have easily been a couple of interviews with designers - it was so informative and entertaining! I'm sure this comment will get lost in the void of the Internet, but I really just wanted to put it out there that I was surprised in the most wonderful way, and I cannot wait to watch more of your videos!
I agree
Started with DOS and coding in BASIC.
When I started using CAD ware (~1994) we all switched the background to black or dark grey. Staring at a 21" CRT all day lit like a fluorescent bulb was NOT an option. We even dimmed the lights (by removing tubes) in the design studio.
Today I dark mode everything.
🤫🧏🏻♂️
My background is very similar but conclusion opposite. When we started to use CAD on a well lit office light mode (new back then with Xerox and Mac) was heaven sent. And I still use it. Having a well lit studio is so much better for eye sight and a white paper like screen is so much better when you are referencing books and paper drawing all the time. With 3D modelling dark mode to me just sucks. I guess this really is a matter of personal preference and there is no true which is better argument to be made.
Well, during lockdown I wanted a way to differentiate between privat and work screentime. To separate them "emotionally" so to say. As a consequence I switched the work device and all the applications to light mode. All my private stuff stayed on the dark side and to be honest, I real enjoyed that separation and nothing has changed to today.
Thats clever, thanks for sharing i Will try that too
Light mode is usually easier to read, because light text on dark backgrounds glow, which can blur the letters together. I don't personally find it a problem and usually set my theme depending on the time of day, but I know a lot of people who do. Both options are definitely important to have.
Personally I actually feel like the exact reverse is true for me. When trying to read black text on a glowing, white background for a long period of time, my eyes get tired from all the bright light which blooms, making the delicate lines of the text even thinner and therefore making it very difficult to read. When reading black text on a white background on my computer, if the text is particularly long at all, I will usually have to lean in closer to the screen and squint just a little to be able to see it better. Meanwhile with dark modes, I can lean back more comfortably and read the white text on black backgrounds much easier. This, of course changes once I'm on a phone or tablet screen, when the screen is pretty close to my face. It's not a big problem for me, but can be a bit annoying, which is why I prefer dark mode options for websites when they are offered.
But yes! Having options for different people with different needs is definitely a better choice for everyone involved, really! Honestly, I think that the best option is to have something that's baseline usable for everyone, but to have oodles and oodles of customization options for people who need it, or for those who just like to fiddle with those kinds of things because they're fun! (And I am one of those people lol)
Ideally I prefer grey on black.
@@valasdarkholme6255
Personally, for documents/ebooks, I like black on sepia. Maybe the trick is not using straight white unless you really need the contrast.
Oh my god I know you
My eyes are pretty light sensitive, so I need dark mode and it's a lot easier to read. I can barely see a single line on a white piece of paper for example. If designers prioritised softer colours like Sepia or other colours besides white, it would be good, but it's usually just white or off white, and those just burn my eyes pretty much.
The nihilistic twist section is like comparing a wooden chair and an ergonomic chair in order to determine which is better for health, and then stating the both are different as the wooden chair wouldn't let you sit in it as much as the ergo, forcing you to stand up and maybe move around, making it better for your health, as sitting for long hours affects the spine and other parts negatively... Before starting a comparison, there should be proper boundaries set in order to get an answer with the least amount of deviation.
Noice
👌🏼
I sit in a wooden chair all the time and I'm not standing up to alleviate strain. The thing is that any chair is unhealthy if you sit in the exact same position for a long time, your body is not designed to do that.
The same way if you're standing still you start shifting around on your feet because it's uncomfortable, while you don't have the same strain while walking.
If you're on a wooden chair and it starts feeling uncomfortable, sit in a slightly different way. So you end up shifting a bit every 10-15 minutes. It's actually healthier for you if you do that on an "ergonomic" chair but you're less likely to feel the need to do that because your body doesn't remind you until hours or days or months later. I'm getting close to middle-aged and all my friends have been complaining about back pain for years. I don't have any despite sitting more than them. Except when I was sitting on cheap office chairs at a job.
My dude, thats not what she said at all lmao. Maybe rewatch that section? What was actually said is that both are functionally the same in regards to all the proposed "benefits" of dark mode, and what it comes down to is comfort, which is NOT the same for everyone. She even points out that that comfort is largely determined by what you grew up using, where young folks are used to being served apps in dark mode default. Maybe light mode is like a flashbomb to you, but dark mode is like staring into a starstreaked void for me, its not just uncomfortable its unusable. People who try sooo hard to scientifically justify their preference for dark mode are so obnoxious, why do you care so much whats going in in someone elses screen, get off your high horse.
There are a lot of sites and apps that are only available in dark mode. I really struggle to use dark mode because I have astigmatism. When I have to use a dark mode site it hurts my eyes, gives me headaches, text is blurry and unreadable, and I get white lines over my vision for a few minutes even when I look away from the screen. Some sites are worse than others, but some are basically unusable for me. I wish all websites would have a light mode option available so everyone can use the site comfortably.
This! Some sites are completely unusable for me too for this same reason. Get those stripes in my vision.
I so a "select all" so that the text has my highlight color behind it. It's not perfect (or pretty) but it helps it burning the stripey image into my retinas.
First of all, I also wish all websites had ease of use in mind, which includes colour, contrast, etc.
But as someone who also has quite bad astigmatism (and often looks at his phone without his glasses - in the mornings/evenings), while I do find white text on black creating some blur, I get a similar experience from black on white 🤷🏻
I get this for "blackout" mode or whatever else it's called. If the background is pure black it's very uncomfortable for me. Dark grey is fine but even then looks ugly for a lot of sites/apps imo.
Meanwhile they added some "super bright" mode that some videos trigger that totally ignores your screen brightness settings and just blasts you with brightness
This is why I hate adaptive lighting. More than which layout you prefer, consistency and expectancy are your friends.
HDR content yeah... fucking hate it
@@wombat4583 Disabling that is one of the first things I do on a new phone.
@@Call-me-Al can you disable HDR video from displaying in apps (Instagram, etc)? You may have just saved my life
@@TurtleKwitty Embrace the future
Stroop test has a problem:
It is super easy to ignore the letters of the word if English isn't your first language and also if you have dyslexia
or just take your glasses off
1:06 I’m on his side, I have the “night shift” set up on my devices so if there’s an option for apps to sync with that it’s turned on, if there’s not it’s on bright mode until the one time I have a headache and need dark mode and then it just stays cause I don’t see a point turning it back 😂
Switching to dark mode is the first thing I do on any device or app that allows it. I could not imagine being swayed. We shall see...
so?
@@KirbosPlanet Still in the process of shalling to see, it seems.
Whereas I spend far too much time having to switch to light mode, even if that’s only from an automatic sensor-based system.
@@KirbosPlanet Dark mode forever!
Yhea no, dark mode is better. PERIOD
Ohh i hate so much the "skip the boring stuff" bit, both editing and the bit. In a show that supposedly "promotes curiosity" being purposefully told that we should not be curious about methodology, detail and results is baffling
I guess that's the problem with "pop science" (i suppose it's not really pop science since it's not talking about curious things like chemistry or physics experiments, but i can't think of a better term)
thankks for saying this! it's exactly what i thought!!!! if you don't want to include it in the video in order to get more people to watch it, you should at least say "i'm going to sum it up but if you're interested in the whole explanation here is the data and my explanations in a link below" or something like that
not everyone has the energy to be like Technology Connections who will create another one or three videos of just the boring bits. She might have gone into explaining it and realized in post-production that she rambled on too much or the actual video was usable due to video quality etc.
@@Strawation fair enough
@@Blankult Science is all about the methods. You can apply those methods to any subject matter... well, almost any
I used dark mode for years and recently switched back to light. I enjoy how there's so much more color in the design of icons. Plus some apps have different colored themes you can apply, but only in light mode. This last point is a bit harder to find the right words for, but it also makes things look more solid(?) or "real"(?).
I think it's about better orientation. We aren't nocturnal creatures after all! That's just ehat I believe. I have no proof.
I use dark mode for stuff but always prefer when things have color than it just being shades of gray. Like the dark blue option instead of solid black in twitter, and at work I just use outlook and word in light mode cause the dark mode ones are just gray and gross
@@AtomicSuperMegray is awesome
@@AtomicSuperMe Some dark modes are just bad. Discord looks nice for example
And I keep spending literal hours with every new smartphone of mine to make all these icons elegant and unintrusive white outlines on a calm dark background. %))) Colorblast makes me feels like I'm at some child's playground and is actually exhausting. Ppl are wonderfully different, and nothing bests having lots of options to choose one most suitable for you!
2:22 I did some research and swapped my light mode and dark mode times. Previously, I had my light mode set to 7:00 AM and dark mode to 8:00 PM. Now my dark mode starts at 9:10 PM and my light mode time starts at 7:00 AM
There's one thing that was overlooked the entire video that, as a light-mode user, I find quite important: Screen brightness
Yeah, of course light-mode is gonna cause eye-strain if you leave the screen brightness high, but I *DON'T* do that, I use light mode in a well lit room, with the screen brightness low, and that not only helps make text A LOT more readable to me (I have astigmatism, dark-mode makes it quite difficult for me to read) but it also doesn't give me eye-strain, because I'm not looking at a super-bright screen all the time, I'm looking at something that looks barely brighter than paper.
I feel like dark-mode users are often forced to increase their screen brightness in order to be able to better read stuff, and as such, when something bright pops up on-screen, they're gonna complain that their eyes hurt, yeah, of course it's gonna hurt, you're forcing your pupils to constantly dilate while poiniting them directly at a screen with its brightness turned up!
Exactly this.
Yea this is exactly it
Yesss I literally have my screen brightness super low and I have night mode on constantly on my devices so nothing is pure white
white text against a black background is even easier to read at low lights than black text against a white background, what are you even on? You’re about as objectively wrong as possible.
I have asymmetrical astigmatism (aka irregular astigmatism) and light mode makes my entire screen bloom out the edges and the text becomes overwhelmed by the white light bleeding around the text, plus I get headaches. So, I am a dark-mode person. I've tried turning down the brightness, but it is just too dim then.
Sabrina forgot to mention one of the main critisms of her readability test that was mentioned on its RUclips post: The test's results seemed to be influenced significantly more by the order in which the light mode and dark mode questions were asked, with the second completion often resulting in a better score purely because the person being tested had gained experience with how the question worked during the previous completion.
I thought she randomized the order of the tests.
@@eDoc2020 It still leads to results that don't reflect what would/should be expected. Someone who may be better at reading with light mode could still get a result that says that they're better with dark mode, if they did the light mode question first and then did better on the dark mode question because they learnt how the question works during the prior question.
@@AstroTheRabbit The order would likely affect the individual results. But if each half of the population gets a different order it should cancel out in the aggregated results.
I'm not a statistician but I'm pretty sure this is true.
@@eDoc2020 From a scientific viewpoint, the experiment would be regarded as invalid as it does not test what it should be testing (which question came first vs. which mode is better for reading).
@@AstroTheRabbit I was thinking the experiment controlled for order but I suppose it doesn't completely.
The studies I heard in the 90s (when it came to marketing) was that we read text faster black on white, and our brains have to take an extra moment to focus on white words on black background.
So advertisers use black on white more often.
Omg, I've been in dark mode so long I forgot I even had it in dark mode, and I just turned it off. Willing to try at least for the duration of this video. Lol.
I like dark mode.
As someone with astigmatism and farsightedness coding in dark mode would make my eyes so fatigued that I couldn't even drive for the next two hours.
I have the same conditions and I really like dark mode. Since I switched I don't get headaches from using the computer anymore. Maybe it just depends on the person
@@AmiCestLaVie Just like the conclusion of the video, there is no right or wrong answer, there is only personal preference
hmmm, i have the exact eye problems (one in each eye) + lazy eye, and i just take my glasses off when driving if im having issues
could it be the color contrast/font in the code you are having issues with?
@@omarpadilla8033 anything dark text on light background seem to be fine for me. I don't wear glasses unless I'm using a computer or using the phone for extended period of time though.
A small aperture increases depth of focus, the region where things are in focus. The converse is also true and that is why low f-stop lenses are used to produce bokeh.
My laptop has a feature that makes me change the colour of the light, and changing it to an orange hue has made a huge difference in eye strain. It doesn't affect my sleep in any way (nor for better or for worse), but avoiding the intense blue light helped so much with the feeling that looking at my laptop for too long, was like staring in to the sun.
I feel like I don’t understand that last bit.
The new iPones features just offer more customization for those who want it. If a user wants to make their apps ugly and barely visible, that’s their choice. They have to make the active decision to do that.
I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing? Or how this means that dark mode has gone too far?
Plus the iPhone homescreen is a tiny fraction of all dark mode uses.
They just included it to justify the hyperbolic title.
I find it ironic that while iOS is at times maligned for the lack of customization it provides compared to Android, when Apple does make it customizable people complain about that as well.
I'm old, I remember the early 90s when we were switching from white-text-on-black-background DOS to black-text-on-white-background GUIs, there were lots of articles in tech magazines about how black-text-white-background was so much healthier and would cause so much less eye strain. Fast forward 30 years and everyone now claims that white-text-black-background is healthier and causes less eye strain.
It's just like particular foods are said to be good for you, but no wait they're actually bad for you, hold on it turns out they're good for you again. You got the right answer: Do whatever works best for you and ignore what "everyone" says. If you wait long enough then what everyone says will change anyway.
As a frequent reader of webnovels where sometimes my reading session can take many hours... Your eyes get tired. And at that time only dark mode is the mode thats easy on eyes. A good dark mode can easily double the time your eyes support reading without feeling sleepy. I am sure there must be other productive areas its useful for as well such as programming. Oh and the battery saving helps extend your reading time when on a mobile device!
I have a cateract and find light mode super hard on the eyes, as the bright areas dazzle me, making text hard to read.
I struggle reading on dark mode, especially if it’s an article. I find the longer I keep reading, the more likely it is that when I look away I see bands moving upwards that look like window blinds. I’m not sure why that is, or why other people don’t seem to have that problem.
I was looking for this comment! Me too! As much as I visually like dark mode, it's not only useless for me, but actually disturbing. And it gets severe after a few seconds of reading white text and dark background, which made me unsubscribe from some mailing lists and literally avoid some webistes that only come in dark mode. The more I read, the loopier I get, and sometimes it happens after a few words alone. Same as you - I see horizontal white lines messing with my vision when I look away, but I have also described it as window blinds : )
So yeah, there is no best design that works for all.
When your eyes see something, the cells activate. When you see the text, the white color cells are activating in lines like the text lines. When they get tired, your eyes instead use the opposite color cells or no cells at all, so you see the dark bands.
Same for me - I can't use dark mode because I'll see banding in my vision for minutes after I stop reading. I've heard it may be to do with astigmatism, but I have no evidence to back that up.
As someone who suffers from photophobia, dark mode is a life saver. I hate it when websites/apps do not support this feature
I hate when youtubers do the thing at 5:45 with multiple videos overlapping making it seem like they are saying something you can't possibly understand (which is masqueraded as "boring stuff", when in fact it is what is actually being done and the rest of the video is actually just marketing BS around that).
Maybe you are just feel intimidated by the boring stuff?
@@valhatan3907 no, i want to know about it. I don't think it's boring.
Same here. I came here to learn, I clicked the video because I'm interested about this topic, so please stop omitting the nitty gritty details. They aren't boring! It's interesting! If someone doesn't care about that level of explanation, then they can just go to the next chapter.
PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS COMMEENNTTTTT WE WOULD LOVE TO GEEK OUT WITH YOU
I feel like my eyes strain more in dark mode than light. Something about trying to read light words against a dark background, it's like watching TV in a pitch black room.
You mean the best way to watch TV? I don't get your point. It just supports dark mode to me.
@@davidlisteresqdisagree. Myself and many others I know get eye strain after watching TV for long periods in the dark. That's why many people put dim lighting behind the screen nowadays
thank you i feel the same
So like theaters?
@@davidlisteresq , no, that's the best way to watch movies (which are made to be watched in the dark environment of a movie theater), not regular tv programs (which are made to be viewed in the light environment of a normal living room).
editing/transitions are on point this video, keep crushing it AiP crew!
That ending was fantastic! Definitely don’t watch a 13 minute video about black and white screens at night! 😵
Light mode also causes your pupils to shrink so if you have an astigmatism (like I do in my left eye) that can get occluded by your iris and cause the picture to be clearer
This!!!
Just started this video, but felt the need to share this, after my astigmatism worsened, I had to switch to light mode to mitigate the symptoms. It was painful at first but overtime I got used to the brightness and wearing computer glasses helped. Weirdly, I felt more alert and productive since I did it. At night I would just massively tone down the brightness. Dark mode does have a lot of benefits, and I grew up with dark mode, but light mode is still an option for those who might need it.
Early computers (like pre-1980s) were all light characters (and later graphics) on dark backgrounds. Early computer graphics were mostly with vector displays, which cannot draw dark lines on light backgrounds. Once graphical user interfaces began to be researched, and we had high-resolution bitmap displays, researchers figured out that “page white” displays with black text was better.*
Oh. As I was writing this, we got to 9:30…
*In Doug Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos” in 1968, where the world first saw the computer mouse, it used a white background.
11:48 - Me watching in grayscale: "Huh? I don't see a difference... Oh wait." 😂
the hbomb reference at 3:49 hit me like a flashbang. effervescent.
i’m so glad someone noticed this
literally was abt to make this comment
11:13 "the real winner of the debate is actually the friends we made along the way"
1:06 get flashbanged lol
Yea!
"Uh.. Yellow??" 3:29 man I love this channel
0:12 That Brother ugh sound, got me good!!! 😂😂
You feel me😅😅😅😅
hey Sabrina, I would like to take a moment to appriciate all the camera angles and takes it took to make this video. You are doing a great job
It's not Dark Mode that I always enable on my devices - I also change the tint of my screens to more yellow/less blue light.
I use dark mode only for video/movie apps, when it's one window that you should concentrate on. Messengers, social medias and books are light
I absolutely LOVE dark mode, I have it absolutely everywhere and refuse to turn it off. Only place I can't turn it off is at work and even there I'm trying to get them to implement it
Depending on how locked down your IT stuff is, you might still be able to set custom colour schemes through the OS and your user profile.
I found that Outlook etc were 1000x easier to deal with after I changed all the whitespace into greyspace.
I've been using a dark theme in my OS since 2012 or so, and for code editors since something like 2009. The fact that every time a website or product or OS starts talking about their great innovation of dark mode I roll my eyes.
6:57 dark mode is only better for battery on devices with OLED displays. On LCDs, it actually takes more energy to display black than white.
I hate that this was a missed fact
And most people use phones that have OLEDs and usually this debate is for phone apps
@@EspeonMistress00 No, this video focuses on phones, but computer nerds are just has agressive about it, if not more.
She said this at 3:03
@@ledocteur7701she also literally said this in the video lmao
Loved the editing in this video!
Because one company added an optional feature to better support dark mode, it means that dark mode killed good design? That’s like saying custom backgrounds should be removed because users don’t consider how background colors affect design. I don’t get the thesis here.
Totally agree, what if you could apply the tint on light mode icons too, does light mode now kill good design? I really liked the video for clearing up the question if dark or light mode was better until that end. Kinda disappointed if I'm honest
Here's a copy of thoughts I posted in a root-level comment before watching the video: (tl;dr: Yes, Dark Mode did in fact do damage to UI design)
Most modern light themes suck because they are basically dark theme designs, light-ified. And not just that, they really, really try to be LIGHT. And as a result, they don't look good. Before Dark Mode became a fad and obsession for people, app designers just did UI design and tried to make nice applications. After dark mode became a Thing, we had to differentiate between them. So we got a Theme dropdown and the options are Dark and... what would be a good contrast? A, ha! LIGHT theme, of course. Which is where the disaster started. Just as in the original Star Wars movies where you'd never hear the words "The Light Side of the Force" - there was just the Force, a vaguely benevolent thing, and then the Dark Side corruption of it. If UI design had stayed with UI Design and Dark Mode, life would have been good. But humans like their categories and contrasts, so they named the not-Dark theme Light Theme, which obviously guides design: The Dark theme is obsessively dark-hued, so the opposite should be obsessively light-hued, right?
Well, no. It's what ended up happening, but it's actually a complete disaster. Why is that? It's because light and dark colorscapes aren't just equal but different. They're actively good at very different things.
The thing dark themes are fundamentally amazing at is making color contrasts pop. There's a reason code editors are dark, and it's not just terminal heritage: You can make colors pop in lighter themes, but in a very dark theme you have much more freedom in choice of colors that really stand out.
What's the weaknesses, then? Well, first, it's not actually easier to read (there's a pile of articles on what is easier to read, not going to repeat them here, see eg. Nielsen Group's page on Dark Mode), and the highest contrast tends to make text a bit less legible due to the background and text bleeding into each other undesirably. This effect, as far as I understand, is worse with light-on-dark than dark-on-light contrast pairings.
What's the design sensibility these inform? What wee see in apps like Discord and Visual Studio Code: UI elements are just flat slabs of color distinguished by different hues, and smart use of smallish contrasts make things nice, clean and readable, because color pops. Light gray text on dark gray background looks fantastic in dark mode.
What's a not-dark color scheme good and bad at?
Well, it's comparatively bad at making colors pop. It's not that it can't be done, but you have a bit less freedom in choice and need to employ a lot more intense colors - my light VSCode theme uses very, very intense neon blues to highlight code snippets as blue, for example, and this isn't bothersome at all.
Not-dark ("normal") themes aren't generally amazing at distinguishing small differences in contrast.
What are they good at, then?
Contrast, baby. You can go absolutely ham on the starkest contrasts you can get and it looks good in a way it never would on dark mode. Stark black text on really light background is a treat for the eyes.
It's also much better at drawing materials, shapes, surfaces. Drop shadows are gorgeous and make things pop and stand out without being overbearing. Strong linework is much more at home in the light than it is in the dark - in the dark, it pops out too much, making subtle gradients obtrusive instead of just informative. Contrast differences are enough in the dark. With a Normal theme, you can make things have some substance, and deliberately draw lines between different parts of the UI. They won't stand out annoyingly, they'll just fade into the background but give a nice, structured feel to the UI, the way shadows do in real life.
Normal themes can also incorporate color into the UI in a more balanced-feeling way because they don't make colors poop with the salience of a floodlight in your face.
Finally, "light" doesn't have to be "bright as the Sun" - the best "light" themes don't try to be light, they just try to be good UIs that don't actively try to be dark.
Pop open Excel (the old theme before the latest redesign), if you have it installed. Strong lines all over the place to delineate different UI elements, the ribbon shadowed to float. Even splashes of color or simple contrast differences have border linework added them because that's how light looks good. The styles menu is very even-keeled in the "colorful" light theme - change the theme to "Black" and all of the colours scream at you. It's less hideous than a dark theme that's been lightified, but still bothersome and in your face way too much. You'd design your UI elements differently if dark was the baseline.
And that is where many light themes for modern apps like make their mistake: They take dark design and dunk it in a can of white paint to lighten it up, and it usually looks ugly as sin, because direct translation betweem the two paradigms doesn't work. Normal/Colorful design to dark design can, somewhat, but it's suboptimal, and taking a dark design and whitewashing it is near invariably hideous. To be excellent, you have to handcraft that stuff. Take inspiration from the dark design, why not, but the design has to really "walk in the sun", not just be dumped in a bucket of white paint.
As one more recent example, check Obsidian's default theme. The contrast ratio between the titlebar and page area/active tab is apparently mathematically the same in both light and dark themes. Is it experientially the same? Not even close. The stark black of the dark theme stands out in glorious clarity and lends the UI good structure, with clear separation of active and inactive tabs. Light theme? Uh, are these a different color at all? The same math just doesn't make whitewashed themes and dark themes the same.
@@Komatik_ can we have a tldr version... either way, i don't think sabrina's "thesis" was THAT deep. she only gave that one apple example...
I had the same feeling
@@Komatik_ I think what you’ve outlined is closer to saying that lazy design harmed good design, which is true.
Back when dark mode used to be the new thing it might have even been the opposite. Dark mode would’ve been just “light” theme in black paint. The true killer is in laziness. Although the fracturing of user preferences (light v.s dark) can be an indirect contributor to that, it is also not inherently the fault of dark theme. If UI designers properly leaned into the strength of both, it wouldn’t have been an issue.
0:39 I agree with Taha, so much so that my Windows computer is switched daily to dark mode with a third-party app Auto Dark Mode
yay another one of us
Good lord, the fact that "back in the day, screens were black with bright text" is now a "history fact" is beyond depressing, lol.
I'm a programmer and one of the "old school" programmers who got their start on DOS which makes me about 132 in computer years, but one of the things I routinely site when I have this conversation with folks, is that if you look at MOST of software that is the kind of professional software that people who use it are using ALL.DAY.LONG. - things like coders use like Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, or Graphics and Video folks like the Adobe Suite, or the 3D modelling folks over at AutoCAD with 3ds MAX and Maya - all of them are some variation of dark mode by default, and in some cases they don't even have a light mode.
Not to mention I'm convinced that anyone who codes in a light mode IDE must be some sort of psychopath :)
Absolutely. I remember DOS and GW-BASIC.
We're the old-timers now. It was bound to happen eventually.
That was always one of the biggest issues I’d have in CompSci classes at college (and ICT lessons in school): Every single lesson would begin with me having to manually reset every single application back to light mode so I could use it.
(Eventually, we just collectively agreed I’d be assigned one computer that would be set to default to light mode.)
I code some languages in dark mode and others in light mode. What does that make me? 😂
I have my vscode switch to dark mode when it's dark and light mode when it's bright. it just makes sense that way
10:50 Showing the changed app icons from the old 3d designs to what they have now made me so sad. I miss the old ones 😞
Absolutely love/appreciate all the camera work going on in this video ^.^
This is like the first sponsored segment I've watched fully for a while. These videos are crazy good.
I have high astigmatism. Dark mode to me is literally unreadable most of the time
do you wear glasses/contacts? do you have the correct prescription? I have astigmatism too and read dark mode fine. But you're right about bright light making things easier to read, as it was explained to me by an eye dr, the bright light has the same effect as squinting, shrinking the aperture of your eyes helping to focus the light into your eyes. Also it took decades until I found a doctor that got my prescription right so I didn't get headaches from my glasses.
Wait what??? I got bad astigmatism and for me, dark mode is the only mode I can use. Light mode is unreadable.
@@teaoanimar not the person you replied to but also someone with astigmatism who has never been able to read dark themes, I can definitely say there has never been a problem with my glasses prescription and that I get the same issues with my glasses on or off (I often use my phone in bed close to my face without glasses on)
I just posted this on another comment.
I feel the same thing when looking at a word file or something for too long, the white background blooms into the letters and makes them blurry
@@teaoanimarmy lens are outdated. But even so, my vision will never get to 100%
Personally I have much more eye strain with dark mode on. My eyes are watering and after I look away I see bright spots in my vision field, right where the text was. While in white mode I don’t feel any discomfort at all.
as someone w light sensitivity i looove dark mode. but as someone w astigmatism i hateee dark mode. i gotta go back to no screens i thinkM
If only there's something in between. Personally I like working on text/code editors on solarised light / dark theme. It's less harsh because they use warm tones, as if you have an orange lamp over your screen. I have astigmatism too, and code editors are often dark mode by default, which I would usually change to something like solarised dark or something with warm tones to help make the text easier to read for me.
have you tried High Contrast mode? some programs use it, i know its a feature on Windows
@@cassinipanini I think high contrast is what makes dark mode difficult for people with astigmatism. For me, illuminated white text or yellow text on black background tends to glow which makes the words fuzzy. Solarised dark uses dark gray instead for black for background and off white instead of white for text, reducing the contrast and reducing the glowy fuzz around the text. Green text on black is also readable for me, I don't know what's the science behind this.
From my perspective, dark is one of the tweeks I usually need to improve workflow. It turn out that taking brightness from visual field enables additional information stand out. But it doesn't mean you're done there. If you're dealing too much information, you need to create perceptual clues that helps you to recognize where a desired information could be (and this process often will happen even before you realizer what were you looking for). So you need to use collor palletes and shapes to isolate different purpose areas. Use distinct colors to signal a given intention to an action button, link or text (or just help sort out keywords like in code). Typography, I don't know that much, but I will always manually set it whenever I can. The basic idea is, reduce information as much as possible and then add information carefully, being sure to improve the overall experience and avoiding implementing so much information that those clues stop being useful.
That last feature sounds like someone figured out a solution, but is still trying to figure out what problem they were trying to solve.
Great video, Steve from Blue's Clues! Kidding, genuinely very informative!
I have a weird middle ground in this debate because all my apps are in dark mode, or if the option is available, "gray mode" which is not as black but still dark. Pure dark mode is kinda uncomfortable sometimes. In sharp contrast my home and lock screen is like a kaleidoscope of a bunch of bright colors.
2:38 thanks for making me self conscious about my blinking lmao
I'm a designer and about 20 years ago my eye doctor asked if I was a designer. I said yeah how did you know? He said because you people never blink... are you afraid you'll blink and your design will be gone? I didn't want to tell him yeah, kinda. Haha! But for 20 years now I am very aware when I'm staring and not blinking while working!
8:40 - Apple effect, whatever a perceived tech leader does is emulated. People then try to profit on the knockoff
2:38 omg this made me so paranoid, i just know i'm gonna start intentionally blinking way more than i need to when looking at my screen now.
This is the video I've been scared about since you posted that community post