Light and Dark Modes – A Big Ol’ Gripe

On the one hand, I’m really glad that this is a thing that exists now. Sometimes it’s good to just darken the shade a little. On the other hand, why are the light themes so bad?

Clasically, we had “light” UI themes as either default (Windows) or the only option (Macintosh System 7 and earlier). As things evolved through the 1990s, we kept contrast. You could tell what was a pushbutton vs. just some text in a dialog box as an extreme example. You had silvers and grays, moving into warmer tans by the early 2000s. Textures such as the plastic pinstripes and polished buttons of early Mac OS X made it match the look of the hardware at the time.

Fast-forward to 2013 when Apple let Jony Ive ruin iOS. In his mind, eye-searing whites with no detail or contrast, no depth or even cues to help you recognize what elements on screen were usable or not. The changes to macOS (or at the time simply OS X) weren’t as extreme yet. They may have smoothed it out, but it was still a tasteful pale gray, tempered so as to not melt retinas. The graphic design retained elements of contrast and shade so as to prevent it from simply being a massive field of white.

During that time, though, the dark mode became such a major call from users, and finally everyone added it…

… and in doing so made “light mode” which honestly, around 85% of the time is simply too bright.

Is there a reason why we couldn’t have “standard”, which is the more classic gray/silver/platinum option, and then a dark mode which retains the contrast of standard, but simply reduces the brightness of the grays?

Not even really a full thought here, just wondering… why are pitch black and eye-searing white the only options?