Dark Mode YOUR LIFE...
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,747 words · ~8 min read
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dark mode has swept over the internet
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like a dark grey tidal wave with hints
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of dark blue nowadays whether you're on reddit twitter youtube or basically
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anything else even our forum there's probably some sort of option to
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change the color scheme to match the black void in your soul but
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is it really possible to dark mode every aspect of your digital
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life and why would you want to
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we're going to let you know right after i tell you about memory
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express memory express's victoria bc location is now open and offers the same
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product selection and quality of service as their other stores check out the link
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below to learn more
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a huge reason that people use dark mode is because they say that reading white
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text on a dark background is easier on the eyes and this is especially true at
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night when the ambient light is low
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but that subjective analysis actually goes
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against a lot of the conventional wisdom
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for years monitor manufacturers have boasted of brighter and brighter
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displays and according to both traditional ui design guidelines and
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studies that rate the readability of various combinations of text and
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background colors dark text on a white background is still
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the number one most readable configuration and indeed as humans spend
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more and more of their time staring at screens it has become apparent that the
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conventional wisdom isn't always the best thing for our eyes scientists are
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now studying new conditions like digital
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eye strain and computer vision syndrome finding that large amounts of time spent
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looking at screens can contribute to sleeplessness headaches dry eyes and
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blurred vision and other studies have found that reading black text on a white
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background can even contribute to increased myopia aka nearsightedness so
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then on to ways to lessen the strain on your
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eyes now one way is called night mode and this is usually a setting
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on your monitor or on your device that attempts to filter out or reduce the
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blue light that your screen is emitting making it less likely to disrupt your
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circadian rhythm causing you to unintentionally spend the whole night
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going down a wikipedia black hole but night mode is different from dark mode
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dark mode is not a filter so much as it's a color scheme or a theme that can
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be applied either to a specific application or in some cases even system
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wide so what this means is that while it can improve comfort it doesn't
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necessarily have the sleep benefits of night mode and in brightly lit
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environments it can actually strain your eyes in exactly the same way that a
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bright screen can in a dark room also
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with dark mode the implementation depends heavily on the developer and not
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all dark modes are made equal okay then so you're ready to take the
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plunge and dark mode your life let's start with Windows 10. Windows has
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actually had theme support for a very long time does anyone else remember
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window blinds no oh bummer anyway now there's a handy
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option right in the color settings to switch to the dark default app mode this
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will make built-in Windows apps like settings calculator and alarms almost
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fully black now it might also
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automatically apply to photos movies and groove music but if it doesn't you can
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go into those app settings and switch it on manually file explorer still doesn't
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have dark mode support so you can expect sudden
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retina searing light if you dare to browse c
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but that is supposed to be coming in the october update so uh
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microsoft does still have some work to do but if you don't like the built-in
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dark mode they also have the option for you to customize Windows high contrast
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settings to basically create your own
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but even what i said just now assuming it all goes perfectly is only the built-in
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microsoft apps i mean who spends their
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whole day using those what about the one app that people probably use the most
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their web browser well edge and firefox both have built-in
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dark themes and while there is no official dark mode for chrome the
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browser's theme and extension support mean that you can essentially kind of
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tack one on so there's a category page for dark themes in the chrome web store
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and popular ones include material incognito dark and morpheon dark with
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the former being our pick but a theme just changes the toolbar websites are
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still going to present themselves normally so some more tweaking is
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required now a lot of websites have built in dark modes including twitter
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youtube reddit the Linus tech tips forum and
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gmail's inbox actually although
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curiously for that last one daring to actually open an email will still blind
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you as for the rest of the web you can install the dark reader extension which
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is also available for firefox and safari on macOS it analyzes colors and tries
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to make web pages look like an official dark mode with some settings available
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for customization as well it solves gmail's dark mode problem but it can
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also cause some glitchiness and delayed loading at times thankfully you can
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actually teach it to enable or disable itself automatically site by site
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now on to another popular app microsoft office there is an official
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dark mode or dark theme found in the settings but
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it sucks it doesn't affect the actual page color
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you will have to go to design then page color for that and if you dare to make
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comments add markups to a page or try to highlight anything you will quickly
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discover some of its many flaws if you're a macOS user well you no doubt
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already know about mojave's dark mode it's got a number of customization
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options and it affects all of the os's built-in apps then for everything else
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the handy website dark mode list has a directory of a ton of macOS apps that
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support dark mode also if you install a third-party app like night owl or shifty
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you can customize and even automate dark modes to turn on and off depending on
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the time of day iOS is where things start to get really interesting though
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so apple added a feature in the iOS accessibility settings called smart
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invert colors which does exactly what it sounds like it inverts the colors in
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every app but it also analyzes the screen to skip over
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stuff like icons and images the result
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is something that's actually pretty dang close to a true system-wide dark mode
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although you might not like the way that it makes some apps look like google maps
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fortunately apple thought of that and you can assign the mode to turn on or
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off when you triple click the power button pretty awesome
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what is not quite as awesome is Android's implementation of dark mode
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now google finally added a dark mode option but it only affects quick
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settings the app drawer and maybe the contacts and phone app
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notifications and the full settings app remain light which is pretty irritating
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you can change individual apps to dark mode phone messages youtube news maps
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that is in navigation mode google play games authenticator gboard and the
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google discover feed but your mileage may vary that is still not working on
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riley's pixel now Android does have an invert colors option but it literally
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just inverts the colors with no post processing to preserve images so it
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really sucks there is the substratum engine an app that enables more robust
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theming support but it requires that you root your device on all versions of
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Android except oreo so obviously there are some trade-offs with dark mode not
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the least of which being that from a ui design standpoint it is more difficult
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to make it look good and there's still work to be done to the point where i
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could see people just opting not to bother if it's going to be this much of
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a hassle but aside from everything we've talked
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about so far with respect to improved comfort there are some other benefits as
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well so for example if you're on a mobile device you could actually realize
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measurable battery savings at their Android dev summit google said
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that using dark mode in the youtube app on an OLED screen could reduce your
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battery usage by as much as 40 percent
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though it should be noted that this was at maximum brightness oh yeah right i
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guess riley didn't write an outro for this i guess that wasn't the
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maximum brightest idea
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oh yeah it's a good thing i have a writing staff
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speaking of staff if you wield your staff in rpg games and
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also stream them online you might want to pick up an elgato
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stream deck it allows you to concentrate on your stream instead of trying to memorize
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keyboard shortcuts one touch operations allow you to start your stream announce
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your live play animations and more without ever taking your eyes off the
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action with a total of six lcd keys that can be customized for any action and
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have the graphics on them changed because they're all little screens it's
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not just for streamers i mean taryn actually has two of the stream decks at
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his desk because he loves his macros for adobe premiere and it's not hard to
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remember which key does what because they're all little screens it's
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available for mac or Windows it's less than 100 us dollars and you can check it
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out now at amazon and newegg at the link below
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
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subscribed and maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description
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also down there is our merch store which has been recently overhauled go
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check it out it has shirts like this one and our community forum which you should
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totally join and then enable dark mode on