Those pesky Irreal minions are at it again. They can’t let a Friday go by without trying to bring up the light-mode/dark-mode debate. Alas, they’ve succeeded again. After the last time, I had a discussion with them but they were recalcitrant and insisted they would carry on until the whole world comes to know the superiority of light-mode.
Kev Quirk was a dark-mode adherent and believed everything that its supporters were saying. But then he did a bit of research and discovered that what he believed wasn’t necessarily true and that maybe dark-mode wasn’t such a good idea.
He looked at three common beliefs and discovered that two were wrong and one was only correct in very specific (uncommon) situations. You can read the details in Quirk’s post but below is a précis of three misconceptions about dark-mode.
1 Dark-mode is easier to read
Except that it isn’t. It turns out the humans were evolved to hunt during the day and have much greater visual acuity when looking at dark objects against a light background. Actual tests show that for people with normal vision, it’s easier to read and understand material displayed in light-mode.
2 Dark-mode reduces eyestrain
This also turns out not to be true. In fact, according to the research mentioned above, it’s actually blue light, not blinking, small fonts, eye problems such as astigmatism, and not taking breaks from reading that causes eye strain. In general, your eyes are happier when they’re getting lots of light, as they do when you’re using light-mode.
3 Dark-mode uses less power
Maybe. If you have an OLED/AMOLED display and if the sites you visit have an all-black background then dark-mode my save you a bit of power. The problem is that most displays aren’t OLED/AMOLED and most sites don’t use an all-black background even in dark-mode.