For six years I used dark mode for everything. Terminals, editors, browsers, my phone, the one app that had to be dragged into dark mode with a third-party extension I definitely should not have trusted with browser permissions.
I told myself it was for my eyes. It was not for my eyes.
It was because dark mode terminals look like you’re doing something serious. Like the work is difficult and technical and happening at 2am because it has to, not because that’s just when you get around to things.
I switched back to light mode about eight months ago after a sustained period of eye strain that multiple doctors described as “extremely preventable.” Turns out the high contrast of bright text on black backgrounds is genuinely harder on your eyes in a lit room than the inverse. This is a known thing. I had simply chosen not to know it.
The adjustment period was about a week of feeling weirdly exposed. Like everyone could see what I was doing now.
After that: nothing. Fine. Normal. The code compiled at the same rate. My PRs were not meaningfully worse. Nobody commented on my screen.
What I actually lost when I switched: a kind of costuming.
Dark mode was a signal I was sending to myself. This is serious work. You are a serious person doing it. The aesthetic was doing emotional labor that the actual work was supposed to be doing.
photo by Source Name
Once I took the costume off, I had to confront the fact that most of what I do is just… normal work. Not hacker work. Not cinematic work. Just the regular kind, in a lit room, on a laptop that is several years old and makes a concerning sound when the fan spins up.
I don’t miss the dark mode. I kind of miss the feeling it was covering for.