As someone who looks at Xcode all day, I'm very happy to be getting a dark mode. But really I have my fingers crossed the syntax highlighting issues get fixed.
In the last five years or so, there has been a push in pro-level apps to include a dark mode.
While some may understand this change as an aesthetic choice, it's also an assistive technology, one that mitigates the visual fatigue that comes from staring into a screen for upwards of 10 hours per day.
It is a welcome change for professionals to have dark mode (visually assistive) interfaces and I wish that web sites would also make this shift or, at least, add the option.
By way of explanation, if one spends a lot of time reading the web or interacting with the file system (macOS, I'm looking at you) the computer display is blaring its full luminous force right into your eyes. (There are small exceptions in the tiny carveouts for text and the patches of darker colors in photos and graphical elements). Though I don't have data at hand, I suspect this is a design flaw that exacerbates eye fatigue, mental exhaustion, and scattered concentration.
Personally, bright white screens blaring in my face all the live long day exhausts me, especially when those screens are 27" times 2.
For this reason, I invert my screen using assistive technologies. The primary side effect is that photos and graphical elements in web browsers are inverted and, for the most part, I used a custom style sheet in Safari, Chrome (now a plug-in), and Firefox to invert images and background images for sites I frequent often (e.g. NYtimes and YouTube).
With Safari 11.1, macOS automatically inverts most images when the screen is inverted. The solution is not perfect as the branding palettes of web sites and their background images are inverted, but I am pleased there is vendor acknowledgement that high luminosity visual fields can be mitigated. (To be clear, lowering screen brightness does not adequately address the issue because it reduces the visibility of all elements.)
My plea to web portals (Hi HN!), business units, design agencies, independent contractors, and hobby bloggers is to offer versions of their web sites that have dark backgrounds with light text and naturally-colored graphical elements.
The increasing availability of dark mode in professional applications forces users using assistive technologies to reduce background luminosity (while preserving glyph and foreground luminosity) to frequently switch between assisted and non-assisted modes.
If web sites (and, ahem, macOS Finder) shifted from bright backgrounds to dark backgrounds, users such as myself would be able to stop inverting their screens altogether.
FYI, for visually impaired users, Windows has offered dark high contrast themes since about forever. I say visually impaired because these themes use some weird colors that unimpaired users likely won't appreciate.
These high contrast themes also make web sites dark automatically, at least in Firefox and probably Edge (haven't checked Chrome).
Additionally, Windows 10 has a Dark mode that looks similar to what Apple is bringing to macOS, but I don't think that affects web sites at the moment.
This is subjective and as old/unsettled an argument as vim vs emacs or spaces vs tabs - although what you're saying is true for you there are many people who argue the opposite. I must have spent at least a day's worth of hours over the years reading long threads with people debating over which is 'correct', 'safer', 'healthier' etc: dark on light or light on dark. People are different. Having a preference is normal but framing it as assistive tech is too much as there are people out there who feel a strain looking at light text on a dark background.
It depends largely on the ambient lighting. Dark themes are hard to read on my bright sunlit train journey and bright themes are often too much for a dimly lit room. I switch between both.
Yes. Healthy eyes depend on natural light or bright near-natural (but low UV) artificial light. Ambient light levels affect pupil dilation and focus, and screen brightness/colors should be matched as ambient light changes. At night, an hour or two before sleep, the blue content of light should be reduced (or lights dimmed) to trigger melatonin production for circadian cycle and sleep.
Summary: use light mode near daytime windows or quality indoor lighting, use dark mode or inverted colors in the dark.
I've been using a combination of two browser extensions:
1) Dark Night Mode
2) Stylish, with a custom theme specified by:
html { filter: grayscale(100%) !important; }
edit: after reading sibling post by m_ke, I'm trying out Dark Reader instead of Dark Night Mode (which seems to slow down my browser sometimes). Definitely enjoying Dark Reader
In the last five years or so, there has been a push in pro-level apps to include a dark mode.
While some may understand this change as an aesthetic choice, it's also an assistive technology, one that mitigates the visual fatigue that comes from staring into a screen for upwards of 10 hours per day.
It is a welcome change for professionals to have dark mode (visually assistive) interfaces and I wish that web sites would also make this shift or, at least, add the option.
By way of explanation, if one spends a lot of time reading the web or interacting with the file system (macOS, I'm looking at you) the computer display is blaring its full luminous force right into your eyes. (There are small exceptions in the tiny carveouts for text and the patches of darker colors in photos and graphical elements). Though I don't have data at hand, I suspect this is a design flaw that exacerbates eye fatigue, mental exhaustion, and scattered concentration.
Personally, bright white screens blaring in my face all the live long day exhausts me, especially when those screens are 27" times 2.
For this reason, I invert my screen using assistive technologies. The primary side effect is that photos and graphical elements in web browsers are inverted and, for the most part, I used a custom style sheet in Safari, Chrome (now a plug-in), and Firefox to invert images and background images for sites I frequent often (e.g. NYtimes and YouTube).
With Safari 11.1, macOS automatically inverts most images when the screen is inverted. The solution is not perfect as the branding palettes of web sites and their background images are inverted, but I am pleased there is vendor acknowledgement that high luminosity visual fields can be mitigated. (To be clear, lowering screen brightness does not adequately address the issue because it reduces the visibility of all elements.)
My plea to web portals (Hi HN!), business units, design agencies, independent contractors, and hobby bloggers is to offer versions of their web sites that have dark backgrounds with light text and naturally-colored graphical elements.
The increasing availability of dark mode in professional applications forces users using assistive technologies to reduce background luminosity (while preserving glyph and foreground luminosity) to frequently switch between assisted and non-assisted modes.
If web sites (and, ahem, macOS Finder) shifted from bright backgrounds to dark backgrounds, users such as myself would be able to stop inverting their screens altogether.
EDIT: add missing verb "is" in 9th paragraph.