[gzread]

First, dark mode is for people who set their screen brightness too high.

Second, win32 is designed with the ability to change all the default colors and you used to be able to do this by right clicking the desktop and selecting "properties". If dark mode doesn't follow this - just another symptom of Microsoft's siloing incompetence. The team that wrote dark mode may not have been aware that this feature existed because parts of the platform are so disconnected from other parts.

[ack_complete]

Dark mode for apps is a setting in the OS and a general expectation now, it's suboptimal to ship a new UI that doesn't support it. And, again, Win32 message boxes in your program will switch to dark mode whether you want them to or not.

Win32 controls ignoring system colors goes much farther back than dark mode being introduced in Windows 10. The theming engine that broke a lot of that functionality was introduced in Windows XP. Beyond that, there were always a few hardcoded colors like disabled gray text going back to Windows 95.

Dark mode ignoring Win32 system colors is not incompetence. It was _intentional_. Dark mode was introduced by the UWP side, which intentionally did not extend it to Win32. To this day, there is not even a Win32 API for desktop apps to query whether dark mode is even enabled. The official recommendation is to compute the luminance of the UWP foreground color setting:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/moder...

[ptx]

But they had dark themes for the XP theming engine, e.g. the Zune theme, didn't they? They could make the dark mode switch to a dark theme for XP-style themed controls and configure dark colors for the Win32 system colors.

[ack_complete]

Yes, and this is also how Windows 10/11 explorer turns some parts of its UI dark like scrollbars. But notably, Microsoft refuses to officially support Explorer's dark control themes or ship a complete dark theme, and because the theming engine only loads themes signed by Microsoft, no one else can ship one either without patching the OS.

[bigstrat2003]

Only a very small minority of users actually care about dark mode. It is not a general expectation for software, as loud as those users may be on forums like this one.

[localuser13]

And how do you know this? I decided to check myself, looked for dark mode statistics on android, and:

>Dark mode is used by 81.9% of 2,500 Android users on their phones, in apps, and in other situations. 9.9% alternate between the light and dark

So it's the other way around. Only a very small minority of users actually care about light mode.

[layer8]

Mobile is different from desktop. Dark mode became popular with OLED panels because on those it saves battery, and blacks actually look nice, compared to the average LCD. I use dark mode on mobile but light mode on desktop.

[fireflash38]

I think android is a big difference here. What about excel or Google sheets? Word?

If you're building win32 you're not targeting android.

[mkl]

That survey was power users only: https://www.androidauthority.com/dark-mode-poll-results-1090...

I would be astounded if a majority of general Android users used dark mode, as light mode is the default on most phones (all, IME).

[gzread]

Mine switches between light and dark depending on the time of day. It was the default behavior.

[Marsymars]

I'm not sure how much Android use generalizes - I prefer light mode, but I'll use dark mode for the battery savings on portable devices with OLED screens.

[jitl]

On Apple platforms is very uncommon to find apps that only support light mode. The only one on my phone is the app for my old Chinese robot vacuum.

[userbinator]

Dark mode ignoring Win32 system colors is not incompetence. It was _intentional_.

Intentional malice, in other words. A stupid attempt at pushing UWP.

[cosmic_cheese]

> First, dark mode is for people who set their screen brightness too high.

Not at all. It became popular mainly because as part of the spread of the flat UI epidemic, the previously non-optional “light mode” OS UI themes all shifted away from midtone colors to blinding stark whites. This meant that monitor brightness settings that had previously been comfortable suddenly weren’t.

On top of this, modern flat UI light mode themes consistently have poorer contrast and delineation than their dark mode counterparts, because higher contrast with darker grays makes flat white UI themes appear “dirty”. So even if the brightness isn’t an issue, your eyes have fewer visual cues to guide them.

Aside from that, on IPS panel monitors lowering brightness past a certain point also greatly lowers color vividness which looks bad, which is why some of us like to keep it maybe not maxed but a bit higher than is comfortable with light mode.

[lwkl]

It is not. I have some issues with my eyesight and dark mode makes it easier to use a computer in some lighting conditions. So for me dark mode is an accessibility feature. And yes you could use the ugly recolor feature windows has but dark mode does the same thing and looks better most of the time cause a UI designer actually looked at it.

[ranger_danger]

> dark mode is for people who set their screen brightness too high

There can be other valid perspectives than your own.

I don't think your brightness sentiment is universally shared by most people, hence the downvotes. I think this comes from one particular study that people just end up parroting, possibly via third-hand gossip.

While a sufficiently low-brightness screen might have some specific advantages to dark mode, I think the issue is more nuanced than that.

First, not everyone can set their brightness to an appropriate level.

If the user is prone to migraines or light sensitivity, light mode even at a low setting could trigger headaches.

Light mode also produces significantly more blue light, which can have health side-effects as well.

If you keep a white screen on at appropriately low brightness in a dark room, the relative difference between the screen and the surroundings is still massive. This creates pupil strain as the eye constantly adjusts. Dark mode aligns the screen's luminance closer to the room's, reducing this strain.

Dark backgrounds make colors pop more vibrantly and prevent the "washed-out" look that can happen when bright images sit on a white background. It can also reduce halos visible around bright objects in photography apps and make the UI less distracting.

For battery-powered/mobile devices, dark mode uses much less battery power on OLED screens.