I remember being very excited when the system wide dark mode came with iOS13/MacOS Mojave. I had wanted this for so long.

As soon as it was out, I turned everything dark all the time. I was on non-OLED iPhone then, and the benefit of darkening the pixels, namely better battery life, would have been non-existent for me. And yet, it looked so damn cool. With iOS18 we got, tinting for app icons, which further made the experience better.

There were still some laggards along the way, some apps were late to support dark mode. Some websites don’t read the system state and switch to dark mode automatically. In those use cases the experience was not optimal.

I was so enamoured by dark mode that I turned my website background dark as well. I am on Ghost’s starter tier so can’t play around with the themes yet. Which is a shame.

I also made everything as dark as I could on my work laptop. Windows did not allow system wide dark mode toggle then. It does now. When I first made the transition, getting used to Outlook and Excel in dark mode was challenging. I got used to it though.

How things have changed now.

What changed?

Two things happened, more or less simultaneously.

1. I read Please Don't Force Dark Mode — Vishnu's Pages, which talked about the challenges of forcing dark mode on people on the web.

pure white text on a pitch black background can strain my eyes and be very difficult to read. The contrast ratio of this combination is 21:1.

1. At work, there was a lot of glare on my monitor from sunlight and it was hard to concentrate on the screen. I was looking for options in the dell monitor and came across comfort view. Comfort view adds a tint to the monitor and blocks blue light.

What did I do?

1. After enabling comfort view, I went back and forth between light and dark modes. I did not need the color accuracy that this mode hampers, so there was no issue there. I settled on light mode being the default for the office laptop. I changed the setting to light for a couple of apps that did not recognise the system setting - vs code and SNow.
2. Next, I update the iPhone's theme to light as well. I added the dark mode toggle to the control centre.
3. Finally, I updated the site to update the background colour from black to white. White seemed, too white, so I picked a grayish colour (#ececec).

How do I feel about the changes?

I feel good. Black text on white background is easier to read, than the other way around. I have reduced the brightness of the displays, as I don't need the screen to be super bright in order for it to be visible.

But, I don't need to be a stickler for this. In some scenarios, like in dark rooms, at night, the dark theme might be a better fit.

In those scenarios, its good that all I need is to press a toggle and I will be back to embracing the dark side!