- I've been a dark mode user for basically as long as I can remember. Mainly because the alternative feels like it requires eclipse glasses. And I sort of assumed that everybody on the internet was in agreement. Dark mode is better than light mode. Look at that versus that. - [Influencer] Brother, eww.
- [Sabrina] But after an argument with friends evolved into an obsession,
I accidentally spent weeks researching the rise and the risks of dark mode. And I'm starting to worry that dark mode is killing good design. Thank you to Hostinger for sponsoring this video and to our patrons
for supporting the channel. Do you guys use dark mode on your phone? - No. - Why did you say it like a slur, Melissa? - Would you like to read a book like you're reading a website from 2008 on the dark web? - Do you think the dark web is just dark websites? Is this what you think the dark web is? Listen, everyone knows that this is a silly conversation that no one should have because dark mode is good when it is dark, and light mode is good when it is light.
- No dark mode is supposed to be like easier, it's better for your eyes like all of the time. - Why isn't it called "better for your eyes all the time" mode? - No, I swear, I read a thing at some point where it was just like it's easier to read? - [Melissa] Says who? - It's easier to read. if it's dark. - [Melissa] Says who? Says who. - So in case you didn't know, the mission of this channel is to encourage curiosity. That means that I don't think that there are any stupid questions. At least then until I heard Taha and Melissa question dark mode. But they are my friends, so I'm gonna do the kind thing and spend way too long trying to prove them wrong. Ooh, that rhymes. Let's do it. I started by reading articles and Reddit threads to get a refresher on why people think dark mode is better than light mode. The idea is. Why are you guys over there? Get over here. The idea is that if I can prove that these claims are true, then dark mode wins. If I can't, I don't wanna think about that. The whole process took a little over an afternoon, but eventually I found that the whole debate can basically be boiled down into three claims. It's better for your health at night, it uses less battery power and it's easier to read. So I looked into some academic research on those claims. Pretty easy. There aren't that many. But here's what I found. The health argument claims that dark mode reduces the amount of blue light hitting your eyes, which improves your sleep and the lower overall brightness reduces eye strain. However, it's still up for debate whether the color of like alone actually affects your sleep that much. And while a lot of people, myself included, use dark mode because light mode feels like a flash bomb, it probably isn't the main source of our eye strain. In dark rooms your pupils expand making it harder to focus your vision, which might cause fatigue. So if you're using your phone at night, it might actually be better to brighten your surroundings instead
of darkening your screen. But if you actually care about your eye health, the best choice
is unfortunately obvious. You gotta stop using your phone so much. When we look at screens, we actually end up blinking shockingly less than usual, which leads to dry eyes. And research is emerging that an entire generation of iPad kids have worse vision because of it. But let's assume you don't actually care and you just wanna use your phone for as long as possible. Dark mode can definitely help. On OLED screens, which is becoming the norm for modern mobile devices,
displaying darker colors requires less battery power. So all that remains is readability. Now there are a few papers out there that explore whether it is easier to read in dark mode. However, these sample groups can vary a lot, and I'm a little bit worried that it doesn't accurately reflect
you guys watching this. So I did a little experiment. My steampunk phase finally came in handy. In order to see how display modes impact readability, I coded a few games, I tested proofreading with a
typing test, processing speed with a Stroop test. Red. Black. Yellow.
And legibility with a bunch of differently sized characters, kind of like what you see at an eye doctor. Z. I created two versions of each game, a light mode and a dark mode. Then I use my Hostinger business web hosting plan to get this project online. If you wanna try out these games, they're linked in the description. Now I usually just upload my files and call it a day, but it turns out search engines hate my lazy code. In fact, if you search "spell check game", which is a game that I made, I'm the third search result. Second place? Reddit. First place? A complete dupe of my game that I have nothing to do with. I did ask for it though. Dupe my website. So this time I set up a Hostinger Managed WordPress,
which comes with a free domain and email, top-notch
security, and of course, search engine friendly themes. I quickly put the website together and just embedded my games using custom HTML blocks. And now look at the search results. But the best part is that WordPress comes with a bunch of plugins that let me push my idea even further than I could with my coding ability alone. I collected a whole bunch of information using a forms plugin and I randomized the order people saw a test and whether they saw a dark mode or light mode version of the website using an AB test plugin. Science! And then I shared it with y'all and got a reasonable amount of responses. Psych! I got over 2000. It was wild seeing how just a few lazy lines of code could become all of this, a complex website
with randomized experiments that could reach across the world. And that is thanks to Hostinger who puts all of these resources together for a fraction of the usual cost. Whoa. If you go to hostinger. com/answerinprogress, you'll find
everything you need to create a website including a free domain, free website migration, and 24/7 customer support. I honestly think it's worth it just to secure your own name, but if you want, you can once again dupe my website and try to usurp me in the search results. I came prepared this time. Just click the link in the description and use code "Answerinprogress" at checkout. Thank you once again to Hostinger for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel. But now it's time to interpret some results. Alright, I've got some graphs for you. Hmm. Ironically, I think I need to use my code editor in light mode so that you could actually see my face. Anyway, since we're controlling for time in every test, we can get an idea Of (intelligible rambling) pandas data frame made up of the value counts of the original dataset. - [Editor Joe] What? - Okay, ignore all boring stuff. Basically what this graph shows is that light mode users always scored better when using light mode. On the other hand, dark mode users didn't always do better with dark mode. When it comes to legibility, light mode consistently led to higher scores compared to dark mode regardless of preference. And interestingly, this is in line with research which finds that the higher brightness of light mode actually constricts
your pupil to improve your vision. The main exception is for folks with low vision where brightness doesn't matter as much as contrast. So which mode wins? Well, your eye health is mainly managed by your screen time and your battery life is mainly managed by your charger. So you could say that readability or legibility is actually the
only claim where display mode plays the most important role. If that's the case, then light mode wins. I know it kind of sounds like I'm grasping at straws, and that's because I am. When I started this video, I expected to find a clear winner. I wanted it to be dark mode, but I was ready for light mode or adaptive mode. I wasn't prepared for the reality that it doesn't seem to matter. Like dark mode is technically better for your battery and more ergonomic in the dark and light mode can lead to clearer vision and reduce eye strain because it is so uncomfortable to look at. It'll force you to look away from your screen more often, which is actually what helps. But if we ignore that, all of that's like comparing apples and oranges, the real reason that there isn't a winner is because those apples and oranges are tiny. These pros and cons have such a marginal effect in day-to-day life or rely on circumstances that are so specific that on average in most cases, they aren't worth bringing up. And I'm not the only one who believes that. - And I'd like to show you a new side of Mojave. We call it dark mode. - Okay so in 2018, Apple releases dark mode on their Mac operating system. It builds off of this 2014 update where the primary focus was just one thing, aesthetics. - [Speaker] And it's so great for pros, it makes photographic content pop off the screen. - So Apple launches dark mode with their primary user base in mind, artists and designers who want to be able to focus on their work and also mimic the environments where it might be seen. Battery life and ergonomics aren't even mentioned. But that doesn't stop a wave of apps and services from using those claims to justify why they started offering dark mode after 2018. And this is like super weird to me because after just one week of some pretty basic research, I found that the reality of those claims aren't as compelling as they originally appear. They're all generally true, but they're not seemingly worth the time, money, and effort for major services to overhaul their design choices to accommodate dark mode. But they did it anyway. And I just wanna know why? Like the real reason. I don't wanna sound conspiratorial, but it can't just be battery life and ergonomics, right? So what was it? I started by asking why dark mode was invented because I know it predates Apple in 2018, but the further I searched, the more obvious it became that I'm asking the wrong question because it turns out dark mode actually came first. Now, I'm certain that plenty of you already knew this, but for those of us who don't, here's a quick history lesson. Welcome. When computers first came around, they used Cathode Ray Tubes or CRT displays. The screen was coated in phosphorus that lit up when shot with electrons, but technical limitations meant that CRT displays only lit up where needed. This resulted in light content on a dark background. Wait a second. Is that dark mode? Whoa! But by the eighties, we were able to consistently light up the full screen and computer companies could replace
text displays with Graphical User Interfaces. GUI! The term GUI is just so gross. There were infinite possibilities,
limitless design opportunities. So what did they settle on? Oh. Making documents look like paper and waste baskets look like waste baskets
wasn't groundbreaking, but that was kind of the point. Personal computers were so new to the average person that designers
intentionally bridged that knowledge gap by using skeuomorphic
design, which mimics tangible objects and experiences in the digital world. And it turns out a pretty common physical experience is light mode. But this suggests that dark mode and light mode weren't originally
intended to be competition. They were just familiar to different groups of people. Now interestingly, this also makes them an early example of universal
design since they consider an individual user's needs and experience. This was shockingly rare for the time because most things were
designed from an individual programmer's perspective or a marketing one. The actual person who was going to use the product was rarely considered. And this totally reframes the way I think about dark mode and light mode because I think it was doomed to fail. You see, I was trying to prove that one display mode was objectively better than the other using averages. But I forgot that good design isn't for the average. It's for a person and that person can evolve. When Apple first started playing with dark mode in 2014, it coincided with the company's overall shift away from skeuomorphic design. It was no longer necessary since their ideal user was familiar
enough with technology that they could adapt to uniquely digital features like dark mode. So I guess the real winner of the dark mode, light mode debate is actually all of us, the people who are benefiting from the options that come with good thoughtful design. Oh, sorry. Just. .
. What the- Dark mode has gone too far and it's killing good design. Last week when I was supposed to be finishing up this video, Apple launched iOS 18 and with it an update to dark mode, specifically dark
mode icons with an optional tint. I lost another week just trying to figure out why it bugged me so much. - [Instructor] Let's turn it on. Isn't that cool? - I thought it was because of the way he clearly doesn't think it's cool, it's prerecorded. He could have done it again. But I think it's actually because unlike previous dark mode updates, this time, they never specify who they think this is useful for. Now, usually when the use case isn't obvious, the answer is
accessibility, which is great, except that can't possibly be the case here because the photo they used to announce the dark mode tint feature doesn't comply with the web content accessibility guidelines. Instead, it feels like they've kind of lost sight of what people actually want from dark mode. And part of me can't even blame them because over the past 40 years, dark mode has come to represent so many different things. Terminal heritage, high
contrast, battery efficiency, low brightness, simplification, and more. Those are a lot of valid design considerations, but the issue is that Apple didn't wanna consider them. This update feels like Apple doing the bare minimum and leaving the onus on users to figure out how to actually make it useful. It's this laziness that I found increasingly common in so many apps and services that become so obsessed with offering new features that they've stopped considering
how a person, an individual is going to use them all, which makes all of those options that once represented good design an opportunity for
companies to offload their UX work onto us. Or maybe all personalization is a good thing and I'm just overthinking it. But either way, have a lovely day.
