Dark Mode can help give your eyes a break

Dark mode allows you to change the color arrangements on an app or operating system that makes the background black or something close to it. The mode makes looking at the screen a bit easier on the eyes.

Dark Mode

Wikipedia describes dark mode as follows:

Light-on-dark color scheme, also called dark mode, dark theme or night mode, is a color scheme that uses light-colored text, icons, and graphical user interface elements on a dark background and is often discussed in terms of computer user interface design and web design... With the advent of teletext, research was done into which primary and secondary light colors and combinations worked best for this new medium...Cyan or yellow on black was typically found to be optimal from a palette of black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white.

Whether it is easier or healthier to read text on a dark background was disputed by vision and perception researchers; there was similar dispute between users.[citation needed] However, recent research by Popular Science proves that "Dark mode is easier on the eyes and battery" [1] and max white uses roughly six times as much power as max black on a Google Pixel (with an OLED, not an LCD) [2]

Where to find dark mode

At the operating level the mode can be found in Apple's macOS Mojave. It is also available in several popular apps including Slack, Twitter, and Google Chrome. However there are still many apps that do not have dark mode.

Third party workarounds

The Verge claims it is keeping track of all new developments. There may be some third part workarounds that you can use depending on your device. The third party apps may not work perfectly and app compatibility could vary.

IPhone's smart color inverter

The iOS 12 on iPhone does not officially support a dark mode. But it does offer a smart color inverter that achieves some of the same effects. The feature reverses the colors of the display, except for images, media and some apps that use dark colors.

Unlike some color inverters, it excludes certain elements on the screen from being inverted. It works well with Apple's own pre-installed apps, along with apps that support dark mode, such as You Tube. However, on some apps such as Apple Maps and others that do not have dark mode, everything will be inverted. This article describe how to turn color inverter on.

IOS 13 may have full support for dark mode

Full support for dark mode may come once iOS 13 is released Bloomberg reported in January. The support may be like that of the macOS Mojave working at the operating system level, and impacting the IOS interface. It could even allow third-party apps to run in dark mode. Google Chrome and Firefox apps switch to dark mode on automatically when the dark mode setting is activated on Mojave.

Already a growing list of apps that includes, Facebook Messenger, You Tube Twitter and others support dark mode on IOS. However, for now you cannot switch on dark mode system wide.

Previously published in Digital Journal