Just as I don’t need research either to know that dark mode inherently increases eye strain thanks to the afterimages caused by using it for more than a couple dozen seconds at a time. I have my own two eyes after all, and plenty of other eyes across the web agree.
> Just as I don’t need research either to know that dark mode inherently increases eye strain thanks to the afterimages caused by using it for more than a couple dozen seconds at a time.
You've probably got your brightness too high if you're getting after images.
I use darkmode when I'm inside and turn my monitor brightness down. When I'm outside, I switch to lightmode and max out my monitor display. Work for me.
I suspect this is an extremely difficult question to answer until we have a perfect model of humans. Maybe there is some gene/mutation that affects something to do with brightness/darkness. Maybe there is some adaptation that happens after staring at at dark/light mode.
Unfortunately we are extremely far from having good models of the human body :(.
It’s too dim and too low contrast for me when I dial it down and leaves afterimages when it’s enough. It is a personal thing.
Also, for programming I’m using not dark nor bright mode. Something like #ddd on #444 on well-calibrated settings. Almost all sites which implement dark mode are much closer to #neutron_star on #black_hole than that, so I hate them when they fail to follow an OS setting.
It's probably because you're using light dark text, on a dark background. To maximize eye-strain reduction:
* reduce monitor brightness
* increase contrast between background and text
For me, light grey background (no blaring, eye smashing white) with black text works well. The only point of "grey not white" is again, to reduce a smashed-in-the-face white background.
If one keeps the contrast difference low, that is, slightly-lighter dark text on dark background, then the monitor must be brighter to discern difference between text and background.
(Of course, as you have stated, this may not work for you.)
