Come to the dark side
The dark mode is not only the latest trend but it seems to be a smart choice for people who care about the environment and don’t want to charge their phones so often. But is it really?
Black is the new green, but not for all
Did you know that by switching to a dark mode you’re reducing the digital carbon footprint?
Dark screen means less energy is required to illuminate it, but only if you have OLED/AMOLED screen. If your phone has an LCD display, hey I just find out I’ve got this one ;( unfortunately, there’s no energy saving as it still illuminates the entire panel even in the presence of black pixels.
Rest for your eyes
I bet you’ve read how white or blue light of our phones may strain our eyes, especially how harmful it is when we use our mobiles at night in the dark holding glowing rectangle in our hands just a few centimetres of our face.
Now I realised I’m writing this text while sitting in the dark room where the only source of light is my bright screen… I’ve turned on my desk lamp.
Evidence for health benefits of the dark mode are not giving the definitive answer. There are opinions that it’s good for the environment but not exactly best for our cognition as it’s easier for our brains to see dark-on-light in general. The factor which determines if white or dark mode works better for us is the surrounding we’re in.
If you’re in a darker room it’s better to work with a darker screen as it lets you adjust your eyes to the surrounding and there’s not too much contrsat between the screen and your room. Same mechanism works for the bright room where the dark screen would be quite a puzzle for a brain.
Bright> bright
Dark>dark mode
Theory and practice
When you change to the dark mode- it might be difficult to get used to. For me personally it’s a challenge- I’m used to reading dark on white as I read a lot of paper books and work with text. Reading Twitter in the dark mode I feel like I can't see things. I feel I need to focus more, but it’s actually good as it discourages me from infinitive scrolling as it too energy-consuming in that case.
Although it’s different with working in a code editor. Since the beginning code editors were dark (great for devs working at night) and this is how I’ve learned to work with the code so trying to work on a white background was difficult, but I reckon it’s a matter of practice (and a result of initial habit.)
Find the balance
There’s no final answer if dark mode is the best option for us. In the case of digital is best for the environment for sure. Switching it on, you’ll not only limit the carbon footprint but also extend the life of your phone on one charge. It may be a great solution for people with migraines who are suffering because of strongly illuminating screens. I think that giving a choice is the best option. We can decide for ourselves what works best for us.
The choice belongs to you (in most cases)
The dark mode is more popular within apps. Facebook introduced a dark mode version very recently. Twitter was one of the first ones to do it. Google doesn’t want to move on and give us the choice, gazing at us while we’re trying to do a search with a bright white light. Apple introduced a full-on dark mode last year and was received with mixed feelings.(more about Apple’s new reveal you can read in Tid BITS article where you can find more information about the history of a dark mode). This month also WhatApp rolled out the dark-mode but only for Android devices.
If you have an LCD display and can’t enjoy longer use on one charge because of the constant screen illumination eeven in the dark mode, you can decrease the brightness of your screen to the level which is lower but still comfortable for your eyes.
Recently Dyson created a product in that spirit. In the “you get what you need” approach designed a desk lamp with Lifecycle technology which is adjusting the brightness of light according to the brightness of the room (your age, time of the day etc). Therefore the light is friendlier for our eyes and requires less power (to glow, don't know how much energy it uses to connect with the app), but is not cheap as the lamp costs now over £400.
Personally I have a similar approach while using my phone. I adjust the brightness according to my surrounding, decreasing the brightness to the level which is low, but still good enough to look at without making my eyes tired. My display is super bright only when I’m outside in the full sun and can't see anything with my normal setting. But this is quite amusing when I’m taking pictures with decreased display brightness and I have no idea how the final crop looks like.
Is the Dark mode for you?
Try it out. You may like it or not. It’s very easy to switch between modes so following common sense you may use bright in the day when you’re in a bright surrounding and dark mode at night when the sun is no longer there and you lost the count of time and still sitting on your sofa in a dark room scrolling your twitter feed.
Slightly darker can be good as well
The easiest thing which you can do for your eyes and environment is to dim your screen. Just remember not to go too far and do it to the level when it’s still comfortable for your eyes. This feature in mobile phone is very easy to adjust so you can do it depending on the condition you’re in. You may have it dark when you’re having coffee in the share and change it when the sun will come your way.
What else you can do?
If you have a website or are about to design one for yourself (with or without help) try to design and build a dark one. Or if you can give a choice to switch between versions like Engie. On their *website you can read more interesting facts about ways we can make digital technologies greener.
(*They didn’t pay me for that mention, it’s just a good comprehensive article on this topic with a bit of marketing stuff here and there.)
*Please do not try to apply a “dark mode” to print as creating white text on black means that the black part is what is printed while white is the lack of ink. Just imagine how much ink is being wasted!
And no, using black paper and white text won’t work for your home and office printer as there’s no white ink. You can check that. I did.
Thanks for reading my 31st post from My 52 problems series.
As Medium allows only 25 posts on publication page few of my posts are missing, but this week I’ll try to create a featured post with the list of all. Just 21 to go!
If you’d like to read more about pros and cons of the dark mode have a look at
