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Dark mode is actually bad for your eyes as it causes more strain. Reading white letters on a black back ground is harder than reading black letters on a white background.

F.lux and similar software are a better alternative as they just increase the warmth of the screen, which, at least for me, eliminates that feeling of eye pain when computing at night.

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Does this apply to letters of different colors? (Non-white letters on darker backgrounds?)

According to this [0] it seems to be defined as dark characters and bright backgrounds. So probably not just strictly black and white colors.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23654206/

Yes, although there is a trade-off with respect to the fact that the more vibrant you want your colors to be, the more brightness they generally require (starting from dark colors), which may result in less contrast on a white vs. a black background. On a white background you therefore want to stay with muted/dark text colors.

Another consideration is that screen brightness should roughly correspond to the ambient brightness of the environment. Unless you work in the dark, that basically requires a light background.

Vibrant text colors on a dark background look attractive (like neon signs), but aren’t very ergonomic in the long run.

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