hoakley December 14, 2018 Macs, Technology

Should appearance mode change text views?

Appearance is visual, not verbal. This article therefore provides three screenshots and a minimum of words to let you decide whether the prevailing appearance mode (Light or Dark) should also change text and similar views in apps such as Pages, Numbers, Microsoft Word, etc.

Light Mode. Prominent apps (from left): Tweetbot, Finder, Postbox, Xcode, DelightEd.

Dark Mode. Prominent apps (from left): Tweetbot, Finder, Postbox, Xcode, DelightEd. (Identical to previous.)

Dark Mode. Prominent apps (from left): Tweetbot, Numbers, Finder, Pages.

All apps shown are claimed to ‘fully support Dark Mode’.

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1

Michele Galvagno on December 14, 2018 at 9:17 am

To a certain extent I think that if the goal of a software is to print something on paper and or pdf or whichever graphical output, then even in dark mode it should stay white (as Pages/Numbers do).

The fact that it kills the eyes is another story! And this is why I personally prefer light mode.

What they claim is…well…just marketing in the end, unfortunately…

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- 2
  
  hoakley on December 14, 2018 at 9:49 am
  
  As I said elsewhere, I can’t remember when I last printed a page from any document.
  How does a spreadsheet have a goal of printing anything?
  You could argue exactly the same of image editors too – but it has long been accepted that, even in Light Mode, they adopt Dark Mode. Interestingly, in Apple’s WWDC presentations, the experts there singled out image editors as being examples of apps which should normally be fixed in Dark Mode. I can’t find any reference they made to apps which should remain fixed in Light Mode. Yet plenty seem to think they should be.
  For some users, myself included, Dark Mode is really wonderful, and has greatly improved the Mac’s interface. It’s a personal preference, not just marketing. But when apps stubbornly refuse to conform and “kill the eyes”, as you put it, isn’t it those apps which are wrong?
  Howard.
  
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  - 3
    
    Michele Galvagno on December 14, 2018 at 11:08 am
    
    Yes, you are right.
    Spreadsheets should just conform.
    I saw an update to the Office suite yesterday but have not yet checked if it supports Dark Mode fully.
    
    For .doc-like documents I still need a lot of printing (working in schools, with children, Italian bureaucracy needed tons of signed docs in multiple paper copies…) so, at least, there should be an option in preferences that lets you set the working field to “print mode” or “working mode”.
    
    Also, on sub-300€ displays at 1080p like the one I have, Dark Mode looks ok as the colours are not rendered greatly as I would expect them to. Nothing ugly, of course, but also nothing I could improve with color calibration…
    
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4

Benedikt S. Vogler on December 15, 2018 at 9:37 am

I read somewhere that dark mode is harder on the eyes because the pupils widen. I could confirm that reading in dark mode felt harder. With dark mode, there is also the problem that Wikipedia’s equations are rendered black on black in dictionary.app.

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- 5
  
  hoakley on December 15, 2018 at 9:41 am
  
  Thanks.
  Dark Mode is a very personal thing: for some, like me, it is wonderful, and lets me work for long periods with minimal fatigue. For others, it is a disaster. Yes, there are issues with rendering HTML in Dark Mode – I have discussed them elsewhere – Wikipedia works remarkably well in Dark Mode (using Dictionary), but there are some glitches with it still.
  Howard.
  
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6

J.G.Vía on December 15, 2018 at 2:05 pm

… I think Pages (for example) does fully support Dark Mode!
It’s a document oriented app where original appearance should be preserved. Dark Mode is fully supported, but you have to create a document where paper is black and ink is white color. Set it as default opening template if you wish.
It works as it should, IMHO.

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- 7
  
  hoakley on December 15, 2018 at 3:52 pm
  
  Thank you.
  It’s one of the fundamental tenets of these appearance modes that they are not about changing content, but how it is displayed on screen. Creating a Pages document with black paper and white text changes the content, and fails because when you view that in Light Mode, it remains white on black.
  Try my Rich Text editor DelightEd (free from Downloads) and you’ll see how you should handle styled text in the two modes, without making any change to its content.
  If what you write were true, Pages 1.0 also fully supported Dark Mode. Indeed, almost every app in which you can fix background colours would. That’s not appearance, or an appearance mode.
  Howard.
  
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  - 8
    
    J.G.Vía on December 15, 2018 at 4:24 pm
    
    Then, I suppose the point is: when or, in which apps, documents should change appearance. TextEdit works “complete” DarkMode. Most documents I create in Pages are printed afterwards, so I like to have this kind of app (and TextEdit). If Pages worked other way, I should have to revert to Light Mode.
    There must be a limit, as everybody agrees about video apps…
    
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    - 9
      
      hoakley on December 15, 2018 at 5:19 pm
      
      TextEdit is a very bad example, I’m afraid: it makes a complete mess of Rich Text handling in Light and Dark Modes, as I examined here.
      I’m not sure that I explained what ‘appearance’ means. When I edit a text or Rich Text document in Dark Mode, it colours text (correctly) in two ways: text which is the default colour is shown as black on white in Light Mode, and white on black in Dark Mode. Text which is set to a user-selected colour remains as the user intends.
      If you then ‘display’ that document on a device like a printer, which only generates Light Mode output, then all the default text appears in black on white, just as displayed in Light Mode on the screen. That is the case whether you print from Light or Dark Mode – its changes on-screen appearance, the way it looks, not content.
      Why should there be a limit? Have you edited Rich Text and other documents in Dark Mode? It is an experience worth gaining.
      Howard.
      
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