It’s Just Darkness Turned Inside Out
I can’t do it any more. I’ve tried. I’ve given it my best shot.
I know it’s meant to be cool, because all of the cool devs are doing it.
I know it’s meant to be better for the environment and the science behind that makes perfect sense.
I know it’s probably better for my eyes, reducing headaches and eye strain and blah, blah, blah.
But I can’t get on board with it.
I don’t like “Dark Mode”.
I can’t even live with it on a mobile, where battery conservation and contrast ratio are genuinely advantageous.
And when it comes to a computer, I’m sorry (not sorry) but I just don’t think that’s how a computer is meant to look.
When Microsoft and Apple put a GUI on their operating systems, it was the start of a computing revolution that banished the green-on-black screens of the mainframe age back to the server rooms where they belonged.
But somehow that UX has managed to crawl back out of the shadows, reinventing itself as a “fresh new look”: a rebooted retro remix, perfectly suited to the aesthetic sensibilities of the discerning hipster technologist.
When Dark Mode first made it into Windows 10, billed at the time as a “highlight”1 of the Anniversary Update, I distinctly remember wondering how thin the feature set must have been if a glorified theme was so prominent in the “What’s New” lists.
10 years on, and Dark Mode in Windows is still the world’s gloomiest patchwork quilt, jarringly conspicuous by it’s absence across a number of key OS applications. That doesn’t work for me.
I’ve even tried it on Linux: Ubuntu “Plucky Puffin”, to be precise. I like Ubuntu, far more than I ever expected to, but it’s not much better there. It just made me feel a bit miserable. And tired.
No judgement here though: if that’s what you’re into then I’m fine with that. I’m happy for you. You do you.
But from now on, I’m done with the dark. Dark is for chocolate, cinemas, and bedtime.
I’m putting on my shades, applying some factor 50 and turning my brightness to max. We’ll see which melts first: my monitor or my retinas.
- “Highlight” seems like the wrong word choice here. Lowlight? Highdark? ↩︎