Github FINALLY officially adds Dark Mode!

[Rachael]

https://github.com/settings/appearance

It was only years late.

[MFG38]

It's been a thing for at least a month by now.

[Nash]

Nice, was getting tired of the Stylus script always breaking when Github changes something on their side. Better late than never, I suppose. :P

Now, if only Gmail's dark theme actually worked properly...

(yes I am aware Gmail has a dark theme, but it doesn't properly darken the actual e-mail content)

[Enjay]

My problem with Dark themes generally is that they have to exist on a site by site, program by program and app by app basis. It would be much nicer if there was some sort of universal handle that apps and sites could hook into to check for a dark preference (maybe there is?).

Even if I set Windows or my phone to run in a dark theme, there is always something that isn't set up for it and suddenly I get a blindingly white window/app searing my eyeballs. So 'I tend to just leave everything at bright because at least then there are rarely problems and most things are about the same brightness. Coming across a dark themed site is far less problematic from a light theme than stumbling across a bright one when otherwise running dark IMO.

The GitHub dark theme does look nice though.

[Graf Zahl]

You can't do this universally because every UI needs some tweaking to get the colors right.

TBH, what I do not understand why 30 years ago the bright themes even became a thing. In the DOS days dark themes were the default but then suddenly some people decided that a monitor is made out of paper where black on white is the norm without ever considering that on a monitor the user is constantly staring at a bright light and ruining their eyes...

[Rachael]

They're good if you have a dark monitor where the "bright light" issue is less, well ... irritating.

Even in the DOS days though, the default color for text was a lighter shade of gray, not white (even though a lot of programs erroneously called it white). True "white" was done by activating the intensity bit, and was usually reserved for bold text.

Even so, strangely enough, most text editors and programming IDE's used a blue background.

The bright themes issue is much longer than 30 years though - in fact, it came from the Xerox Alto, which was released around 1972. Nearly 50 years now. A true "boomer" computer.

[Graf Zahl]

Even so, strangely enough, most text editors and programming IDE's used a blue background.

The bright themes issue is much longer than 30 years though - in fact, it came from the Xerox Alto, which was released around 1972. Nearly 50 years now. A true "boomer" computer.

Bliue background with white text is a lot less irritating than pitch black background. My favorite combination has always been dark blue with yellow text.
Regarding the 50 years, that may have served as a bad template but it was a lot later that it entered mainstream, the first time I encountered it was with the GEM UI on Atari ST - and it surely was hailed 'innovative' by some morons because it is "much closer to paper" (yeah, right...)

[Caligari87]

this is somewhat annecdotal, but I've heard that the modern prevalence of bright themes stems (at least partially) from Microsoft pushing Windows as a more skeuomorphic experience than DOS to help sell it to non-computer-savvy people. Computers were light text on a dark screen, but books were black text on white paper, and MS wanted to appeal to customers who found DOS intimidating because it wasn't congruent with how they typically consumed media.

[Enjay]

I'd always assumed that it was as much to do with "trying to look a bit like what those Apple Macs are doing but not too much" (i.e. copy my homework, but change it up a bit so that it looks different). My wife had been using an Apple "one-eyed desk monster" at her work for several years before most "IBM Compatible" PCs were running a GUI interface by default. So, I've always just assumed that Apple basically set what GUIs are meant to look like by being the first ones that really made such systems common. Prior to that, everything on "IBM" PCs was textmode DOS-based programs which, yes, were mostly light text on dark. So there could also be something in your skeuomorphic theory (though whether that was down to MS, Apple, Xerox or whoever could still be debated I guess). That's the one of the reasons that Kindles use black text on white "paper": it looks like a book.

[Graf Zahl]

That's the one of the reasons that Kindles use black text on white "paper": it looks like a book.

So now all EBook-readers are "Kindles"? How far have we gone...
Aside from that, eInk is a passive display that requires external lighting so it does not really compare to computers.

[Gutawer]

My problem with Dark themes generally is that they have to exist on a site by site, program by program and app by app basis. It would be much nicer if there was some sort of universal handle that apps and sites could hook into to check for a dark preference (maybe there is?).

This part at least does exist, CSS has a media query called prefers-color-scheme which (in theory) gets set to the dark and light values depending on what the OS thinks the color scheme should be. Of course the site designer then has to actually write different CSS rules for each value, but at least it can be done automatically. Whether browsers and more specifically, browsers on specific OS' support this is a bit more flaky. I've found that Chromium on Linux doesn't detect my system's dark theme whereas Firefox does.

[InsanityBringer]

TBH I think black on white has been around since the inception of the GUI. Some photos of the original NLS show black on white. Many programs as far back as the Xerox Alto tended to do black text on white. Of course, Xerox was pretty invested in the printed document world back then, so I sorta assume they were trying to copy that.

[Redneckerz]

I humor the whole idea of Dark Mode being an actual thing, but its definitely has its uses (ofcourse it does).

I am just surprised the whole concept didn't take off sooner.

[Nash]

Speaking for myself, almost all software I use daily (90%) is operating in some kind of dark mode. I simply cannot work with "bright mode" anymore. If something doesn't have a dark mode, I simply try to either make the window smaller, or turn up my room's lights (or my monitor's brightness down) for the duration I am forced to use that particular app without the dark mode.

[Rachael]

Windows Magnifier actually has a feature that was meant to help with this. But it's far from an ideal solution. In fact, I hate it, but it's better than having nothing at all.

If you did not disable its accessibility key, win + kp+ will activate the magnifier, you can then use win + kp- to bring its zoom level down to 100%, and then after that, press "ctrl-alt-i" to invert the screen. Might be handy.