Dark mode is not a fad, it's simply a good option to have in the valid cases you describe[1], and has been available in many products for decades.

The reasons we're seeing more of it are that developers are switching their bad hard-coded UIs to more flexible systems which allow it, and now that even MacOS/iOS supports it, there's an expectation for more and more apps to conform.

[1]: another valid case is apps with a strong emphasis on graphics: Photoshop, YouTube, Instagram, etc. A dark UI mitigates visual interference with the content.

In my experience, developers have been choosing dark mode for their editors for many decades. That doesn't feel like a fad to me.

Edit: but to be fair, I agree dark mode can be bad in some contexts like the examples you gave.

> 2. You're making a screen recording of your content to demo or educate others (Youtube, etc.).

I very much prefer using light themes but I also record screencasts (400+ of them at this point).

Every time I run a poll asking folks if they prefer light or dark there's been a majority requesting dark mode in the recordings.

Personally I find the colorization of most dark themes having more contrast between the colors. A lot of light themes will make certain keywords dark colors which kind of looks the same on compressed video. I'm not sold on that being the reason most folks prefer dark themes, but I'm also not convinced light mode is better for video recorded content. I think with the right themes, maybe both are equal.

I've gone as far as writing a shell script to easily toggle dark and light mode for my terminal, tmux, Vim theme, FZF and other tools: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/live-coding-a-shell-script-to...

All I end up doing is running `toggle-dark-mode` to seamlessly switch between the 2.

I can assure you that if you produce dark mode content, people will not be able to view it if they are sitting outside in typical daylight.

I know this because I have tried, with three different modern laptops (two MBPs and an XPS) which have the best brightness available for laptops. If I hit dark mode content, it just has to wait until I'm indoors. But usually I'm looking for something because I need it at that moment. If I can't view on potential illustrated video, I will try the next one I can view.

People taking the time to produce content often do care about attracting and keeping viewers/subscribers, and this is a case where an accessibility issue will reduce the number of viewers.

I highly appreciate the effort people put into sharing their knowledge, but I find it really disappointing when I can tell that their effort is wasted on some potential viewers. I may be weird (no, I am, but that's not necessarily a negative), but I know I'm not the only person with this opinion.

I wonder if some of the videos you've watched had darker themes with poor contrast ratios or maybe the font size was too small? Font size makes a huge difference in the end. It's as important as contrast ratios.

I have a $300 13" Chromebook with a 1080p IPS display and I spot check some of my videos on it. I'm able to read the text outside. Although I try to position myself to not directly have the sun glaring on the screen. That would be an issue to read anything, video or not.

I'm always for improving accessibility. If it's not too much trouble would you mind skimming one of my videos to see what it's like on your main device? Here's a video on creating a GPG key pair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vVIpIvboSg

Your video is fine. I can't try it in bright sunlight unfortunately because we don't have a sun in the winter in the Netherlands :/.

Your video appears to be all in the terminal, and most text is white on dark background. Plus the font is bigger.

Contrast this (pun not intended) with an example of a colorful code video (not an ide, but representative of what you see in a lot coding videos https://youtu.be/zC7TcrRi46Q (not to pick on the producer of this video... just grabbed an example). This example is unreadable in bright ambient light, and there are many videos with about the same colors and fonts. These are the ones I'm talking about.

Thanks. Yeah good call on the lack of color in that one. Here's a better example https://youtu.be/44pNDuRO77g?t=269 , it's straight to a point where I'm in a vimrc file with about the smallest text I ever use on video. I'm guessing the comments would be pretty hard to read in a high sun light area, that's my only complaint with the One theme -- the contrast on them is a bit low.

In the video you linked I see what you mean. I haven't tested it outside but just eyeballing some of the screenshots in the presentation the blue function names are likely impossible to read, the dark orange / red module names could be borderline too since it's kind of dark text on a dark background, and even the green atoms are a bit similar to the background in terms of darkness. I'm not sure what color theme that is but personally I wouldn't use it.

I try to stick with One and Gruvbox. Both have pretty decent contrast ratios for both light and dark variants. I have 1920x1080 screenshot side by side comparisons of both with dark vs light in my dotfiles at https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles.

Meh. I like it. Particularly when working at night. Simply turning down the brightness often doesn't cut it.

Yeah. The only time I really want a dark mode is if the room I'm in is dark.

If it isn't, I usually just don't care or actually prefer white for some things like writing mails.

As long as it's a choice, then great! But if it is forced upon you, then it can definitely be a problem.

I haven't generally seen that the trend in introducing dark mode has involved forcing it on users.

With most apps I've seen, it is indeed a choice. It's not a choice when someone records their dark mode screen/app and shares that content. There's a lot of very valuable tech education on youtube (people demonstrating frameworks, languages, etc.); when the kind people making those videos are using dark mode, some of their viewers are out of luck. That, and the conference talk projector example, are cases where it is not a choice.

So I'm encouraging people to consider their audience. If there is no audience, then one has only oneself to consider :).

Different people have different eyes. I have strong visual noise and floaters, and having choices for colorscheme helps me select the one which reduces these visual distractions.

There are benefits to dark UI for dim environments. The fad that I too am sure will pass is using a jarring UI for the environment just because it is cool.

There are fundamental differences when designing for bright/day vs dim/night that benefits humans. In-car GPS was a specialised UI that paid attention to this earlier than our computers. The night UI maximised clarity in a low-light environment without being distracting. The day UI met the daylight with similar clarity. Never jarring.

Triggering a system-wide change across devices when the sun dips below the horizon is a nice start. The fact that it trickles even as far as webpage and VS Code theme is just awesome stuff.

Speaking to your detrimental cases, maybe the auto-change could be based on ambient light level rather than sunset time. It is certainly possible. Excluding the Nordics, the better solution is likely to move humans closer to natural light. Dim the room or build for natural light, rather than our screens able to be brighter to meet an artificial environment.

> Except in the cases of saving battery on OLED displays or viewing a screen in very low ambient light environments, dark mode is the wrong answer to a problem of an overbright display.

Both OLED and browsing in random low light environments often happen in the context of mobile devices. We do more and more on our phones. Because of that I wouldn’t treat OLED and low light as an edge case.

> The low contrast, colorful text will not compress as accurately as light mode

Kind of off topic, but I've always wondered why this is an issue. If I invert the colors, will those parts of the image suddenly compress just fine? Is it something to do with human perception of dark colors (like how many compression algorithms use more detail in various characteristics we're more sensitive to, such as brightness, as opposed to color)? That wouldn't make sense to me, as it seems to be a pretty obvious visual flaw.

This dark mode topic came up in the past, and I commented similarly. One (typically knowledgeable) HN reader replied to my comment with an explanation about this. I would have to really dig to find it though...

I'm not sure, but I suspect that in general, dark mode syntax highlighted (highlit?) text is on average lower contrast than syntax highlighted light mode text. That could affect compression behaviors, perhaps.

Dark mode is easier on the eyes. Think about it: your monitor is not a piece of paper, no matter how hard you try to make it one. Staring at a white background while you read is like staring at a light bulb (don't believe me? Try turning off the lights next time you use a word processor). Would you stare at a light bulb for hours at a time? Not if you want to keep your vision.

The most compelling argument for dark mode, is simply the fact that so many people seem to love it and choose it

> I predict that dark mode, like the open office, is a hyped up fad that will eventually be proven to be largely detrimental.

Bold statement. I insist on dark mode everywhere and love it. Besides what compelling reason is there to give the user fewer UI knobs? We all have our own preferences.

Apparently I did not write my post clearly, because I did not think I ever said it should be outlawed. Options are great. I did suggest that people consider their mode choice if they have an audience.

Dark mode is useful because its always usable regardless of screen brightness. Who wants to be chaining their brightness all day? Also for high contrast, white text on black is always readable while the reverse is not true, limiting the contrast.

And the points you mention are not a problem with dark mode but with low contrast. These can be fixed by increasing contrast.

I like it for the most part but some apps take it such an extreme that I can't even tell where the window edges are when they are overlapping each other and buttons are indistinguishable from the window background color. The skin I am using on JRiver Media Center is that way and the other choices aren't really much better.

There is literally nothing wrong with dark mode. It is a _choice_ which makes your analogy invalid. You can not choose to have or not have an open office as an employee, and no picking a new place of work is not the same thing.

What you're saying is akin to saying: "You like dark mode? Well you're wrong its bad for you." No thanks, not interested in your opinion.

And I "literally" provided two examples of where it's a bad choice.

If you are the only person viewing your screen, then by all means use whatever color scheme you like. I never said it was bad for you. I just illustrated when it is bad for some people.