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Comment by kleer001 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I can't stand dark mode. It literally hurts my eyes. Strain after a few moments and interlacing ghost lines that linger in my vision for a minute.

Does anyone else have this?

Is it brain cancer?!

edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer.

Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.

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Dark mode can cause strain on eyes. Lower total brightness means your pupils open up to be able to take in more light. Wider pupils means lower depth of field, i.e. less stuff in focus immediately in front of/behind whatever you are currently focused on. You are more susceptible to having to refocus from subtle movements with a lower depth of field. The less of a steady state your focus, the more the muscles involved in focusing are engaged, which might be a cause of the strain you are feeling.

Similarly, this is why your eyes can hurt while reading in dimmer settings. It's not because low light itself is somehow harmful while reading, but because your eyes have a harder time staying focused as you naturally move while reading.

edit: I adopted light themes everywhere after reading this, probably https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268 . Knowing depth of field from photography helped this make sense, as well as understanding (from conversations with a doctor in my family) that the generic feeling "strain" is most likely associated with muscle activity than anything else.

I use dark mode with large text for this reason. It's definitely true that you can read smaller text with light backgrounds, but the comfort is higher for me with less light from the screen, so I'm ok with less info on the screen and dark background.

It's not brain cancer but rather an artifact of how the eye/brain system works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage

Honestly, that's more of what I think. I figure I get a higher activation of my edge detection neurons. Somehow.

Astigmatism, possibly? IIRC, dark mode is worse for most users (though they may not notice it, and the placebo effect is powerful in this sort of subjective rating) but it's particularly bad for people with severe astigmatism.

I think I read it has to do with having astigmatism. Which I have, and I also prefer light mode for the reasons you state.

Dark mode makes me tired, I think. I don't mind normal black text on a white background.

It's not brain cancer

Everything is brain cancer if you look it up online.

Same here. I hate dark mode. Especially websites in dark mode.

I have exactly the same experience.

Same here too.

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