Why I Stopped Using Dark Mode
Once upon a time, I thought to myself that dark mode is the best. As a developer that once lived the “night life” — no it’s not staying up late at night with some fancy music and drinks, well actually that part is true, some fancy music and water to keep up the night candle alive; however instead of dancing and scratching those disc, I’m just pressing those backlit keyboard.
Whenever I opened the code editor, I’d be greeted by Count Darcula.
The dark night, the dim light, and the dark mode — seems like a perfect combination right? Well, until one night I decided to look at the moon.
“Wait, why am I seeing two moon? Is this the end of the universe? Is this just some unique physics condition and rare light phenomenom? Hey are you seeing what I am seeing?”
“No”
Welp, time to do an eye check. Fortunately, it’s not the end of the universe, nor am I hallucinating. But, it’s just that I have astigmatism; it get worse now that whenever I see light text on a dark background, I can see a faint shades of the text above it; which is annoying.
Well, I am not seeing two suns during the day, so let’s just switch to light mode and maybe I won’t see the text shades anymore. It worked! No more annoying text shades lurking in the dark.
I started removing all dark mode preferences from my laptop and phone — it’s light and bright for the win, and it makes me more productive anyway (subjective, stop asking for data).
So for developers and designers out there, don’t default to dark mode. Seeing two moons dancing around the stars might be pretty and exotic, but looking at {{ tthiis.propss.texxt}}} stacking on top of each other like a badly set left top right bottom CSS property is not.
