The majority of the research out there does not support dark mode being better for your eyes. Generally, you only experience additional eye strain from a screen when the brightness of the screen is different from surrounding light conditions. So if you want to reduce strain, use brighter screens in bright daylight and dimmer screens in a dark room.
However, the research also indicates that it is easier for most people to focus on text when it is dark text on a light background. This is especially true for people with astigmatism (about 1/3 of Americans).
So, kindly leave your default dark mode off my sites. Thanks.
True. Updated the last sentence of my comment slightly. I suspect most people who use the Internet are not basement dwelling trolls and therefore probably are typically in brighter surroundings.
Loved the old amber screen VT220 terminals.
Amber on dark grey inactive phosphor (or dark amber depending on how you fiddled with the brightness).
I wonder how much OLED and "true black" displays have contributed to eye strain in recent times. Bright text and absolute black display might be good for vision/clarity but is it good for long term use?
Paper reflects light for white, ink absorbs light for black.
OLED and CRT screens stay off for black, use power for light.
LCD screens keep the backlight on all the time, only hide it for color/black.
E-ink works like paper... but has low refresh rates and the displays tend to break somewhat easily.
If we all used dark mode on OLED screens, we could save maybe 0.0000001% of energy, making everything "more sustainable".
LCDs do not stay off for black. LCDs fill the entire back with bright white light and then shutter off pixels to make them black. The energy used between displaying white (the backlight) and displaying black is basically the same.
OLED is a bit more complex.
•
Paper reflects existing light, but backlit screens emit it like a torch.
You are right though, paper doesn't absorb it unless it's coloured in any way
Paper vs display at same intensity and colour, sure. But there’s other differences like actual brightness, contrast ratios, colour temperature, etc. which can have subtle effects. I believe one of the biggest issues in terms of eye strain is when you have a display that’s brighter than the surrounding area, and lower contrast/resolution. I feel like the benefit of dark mode is less about the total light emitted, but when the brightness is from the text instead of the blank area around the text it’s more readable because you’re not trying to read through the glare of the background.
Dark Mode anything gives me headaches in sub 10 minutes, so I really can't agree with this comment.
I did a report in college on eye strain and, at least at the time, most findings seemed to support that dark mode lends itself to greater eye strain. That was 12+ years ago though.
I also have astigmatism, so that may play into my issues with dark mode.
Your first mistake towards sustainability is visiting Nestle in the first place. That company's existence is the opposite of sustainability.
According to a Purdue University Study dark mode can save 3 to 9% of your battery if you're on auto brightness. Let's say your average phone uses 15Wh per day (5.475 kWh per year). Let's say 5 billion people use smartphones. That's around 30 TWh for total yearly smartphone consumption.
So if everyone was using dark mode, it could save around 0.8 to 2.5 TWh a year in the best case scenario. But that is if everything on your phone was dark mode. Not sure how much time people spend browsing websites percentually.
That's around 0.1 to 2.7 times the daily electric energy production of all nuclear power plants.
The world electricity production is around 23000 TWh per year, so you could save around 0.0036% to 0.01% of yearly energy consumption by switching everyone to dark mode.
Such impactful, much environment, wow
•
that study talks about oled displays btw, shit's not gonna change for regular backlit devices
word of the day is greenwashing, fucking engrave it into your brain -- get the words for the phenomena and all that shit
Fuck Nestlé, but technically they are right - it saves a little bit of energy and that's not a bad thing.
Yes, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of energy we produce and no doubt there's better ways to save energy but heck, I'm down for doing the little things too.
Besides, it might encourage others to offer dark mode and that's no bad thing.
Again, I reiterate my opening statement: fuck Nestlé.
While I think it's nice that more people care about the environment, I wish that that same attention was proportially distrubuted amongst the issues causing the most damage instead of inconsequential shit like this.
People get extremely neutrotic about the most inconsequential environmental issues, but completely ignore all of the most impactful ones.
Aside from the existing well placed criticism like oil subsidies, I wish people were that passionate about using wood in conctruction instead of concrete. Switching to heat pumps where possible. Or not driving cars more than necessary or switching to smaller vehicles, like small electric cars, motorcycles, ebikes and bikes or public transport. Or that people would demand the end of corn and soy subsidies and biofuels, which are completely counter productive in their current form. Or that people care more about how zoning and building codes destroy the environment with things like single-family zoning, minimum parking requirements, banning mixed use etc..
I would like a more rational approach to environmentalism instead of this endless pointless virtue signaling, self-flaggelating and greenwashing.
But I get the feeling that things are going in the right direction at least.
I think things are going in the right direction, yeah. Things could be moving faster and we could be doing more, but I don't think that precludes all the little things either, it all adds up.
That is true, I think we are currently entering the exponential part of the technology curve when it comes the sustainable technologies. Progress over the next 20 years will be insane. Thing like cheap high density batteries, solid state magnetocaloric heat pumps, crazy advances in computing/automation/AI will all add up really quickly.
I'm also really looking forward to our daily lives not being subject to the whims of despotic fossil fuel states.
Yeah but when you consider that this massive show of goodwill came from the shriveled-up raisin that Ulf Schneider calls a 'heart', it's an improvement of 420%!
I’m pretty sure those savings would apply only on pitch black interfaces on OLED screens, IPS panels do not use less energy by displaying black, unless is the only color on screen.
If a UI is dark grey (like the Nestle one in this post screenshot), all of the diodes on an OLED screen are lit up, so there shouldn’t be any savings whatsoever.
Also, we’re far from having dominance of OLED screens in the smartphone market, which would be required for your scenario to apply.
This is true, good point. Avoiding nestle is a more sustainable experience for life on earth.
It should be noted that it’s on light mode by default, then they give you the pop-up to turn on dark mode
On devices with OLED screens, the more pixels on the screen are lit up, the more power the screen consumes. So on the majority of smart phones these days, dark mode will slightly reduce energy consumption. Devices with LCD screens will likely show no difference, and we're talking a fairly negligible amount of power here anyway.
So you are saying nestle could contribute more by not using child labour in African cocoa plantations?
That's absolutely not true. OLED pixel energy usage is proportional to the amount of light they need to emit. Dark gray is essentially the same as black in terms of energy usage.
Yes it is, mostly. It’s proportional.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34069781
This chart is the relevant part: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/9394/luminance-curve.png
Not exactly. Yes dark grey will consume more power than full on "the pixel is turned off" black but it does take less energy to show a dark grey screen than a bright white one.
Lmao, says company that literally dries out local aquifers and puts that water in plastic bottles…but dArK ModE 🫠
Advertising and corporate messaging are not about being right, but only about appearing right to a sufficient number of people.
On OLED screens dark mode does actually save power. My phone switches to dark mode when I turn on battery saving mode.
It probably doesn't matter much in the grand theme of this, but let's keep the criticism factual. God knows you don't need to make up arguments to criticize Nestle.
Yeah its not that you (and Nestle) arent right, its that its such a pissingly small amount of energy even on a global scale to be laughable.
Like "Nestle, you arent wrong. You're just an asshole"
It doesnt really matter when its just a gray theme and not black then on oled the pixels are still on
It should be noted that it’s on light mode by default, then they give you the pop-up to turn on dark mode
•
It only really does anything if the pixels can turn off completely. So the dark theme would have to feature full black backgrounds, not dark grey or anything like that.
•
But realistically, how much energy is really being saved on a global scale? If everyone who visited the nestle site all used dark mode, would it save more energy than a single car ride to work?
Definitely not nearly enough as if a company such as Nestlé acted to actually become sustainable and green, but it's all about guilt tripping John Smith into making his life more miserable on the fake promise that he's actually helping save the planet while companies keep trying to destroy it.
If everyone who visited the nestle site all used dark mode, would it save more energy than a single car ride to work?
If you work from home, maybe... /s
That's not true. You can go upwards to 33% grey and it'll have the same effect as completely black if I recall correctly, but the all around energy saved by using dark mode isn't anything to write home about, really.
The Purdue study found that switching from light mode to dark mode at 100% brightness saves an average of 39%-47% battery power.
That's a lot actually. Only that much outside on sunny days, but still.
It doesn't, but Nestlé's CEO probably thinks he can use this as an excuse to enter through the Pearly Gates rather than get tossed into the pit that's reserved for him in Hell.
There is some truth in it, they reduced the iPhone Box size, so they can ship more iPhones in the same amount of space thus reducing emissions for transport. What they should have done tho is allow people that buy a new iPhone or iPad to get a charger for free if they want them. That would still reduce emissions from transport.... but they choose the way that people would need to buy a charger and with that also sneakily increasing the iPhone price by removing things that were included with earlier iPhones. (charger $19 + EarPods $19 that are no longer included with modern iPhones).
I don't think anyone spenda enough time on their site to make a real difference, it's all show-boating.
•
What's up with giant corporations and guilt tripping people into switching to dark mode? I've heard win11 does this as well.
The dark mode in windows doesn't work anyway. Half of the Microsoft programs you open still use dark mode, and hardly any third party apps follow your system dark/light either.
Guess what? Cycling dark mode results in over 300 requests to nestle servers, so it does use power sending all those requests
