I would tie the sudden demand and popularity of dark mode not with LCDs, but with the advent of flat design (Metro, Material, etc), which replaced the midtones of previous themes with stark, blinding whites and scarcely darker grays. The difference is particularly striking in iOS native apps pre and post-iOS 7 — iOS 6 and prior was even more midtone-weighted than its desktop contemporaries.

I was perfectly happy to use iOS 6, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and Windows 7 without dark mode on LCDs, outside of code editors (there, I liked those dark even before because it makes syntax highlighting “pop” much better). It was only after those releases when I started wanting dark mode.

We have to get away from printer paper light mode themes.

> the first LCDs that came out were very dim compared to the CRTs they were replacing

Maybe this was true on laptops, but I remember my first experience with an LCD on a desktop was with the G4 iMac in 2003. I remember it came out of the box set to 100% brightness and it hurt my eyes to use it. It took me a little while to figure out how to turn it down so I could use it pain free.

Before that iMac I had a Thinkpad with Windows 2000, which was very gray. I don’t remember having problems. The shift to white seemed to come after LCDs were already pretty capable.

In my memory dark mode seemed to come much later, as people would use their smartphones in bed and be blinded by the light coming off a white webpage background. There was a vocal minority that then pushed for dark mode on everything. It is possible that before that was the idea that dark mode would use less energy and we should do it to save the planet. I seem to remember that fad for a while, but don’t recall where it fit in the timeline.

As someone who has moderate to fairly heavy lighht sensitivity when I'm not dealing with migraines and extremely heavy light sensitvity with headaches, I'm just going to say that you're absolutely wrong here.

Not every user has the same physiology. Dark mode is an accessibility option for a fair number of us.

Some recommendations based on studies here https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/

> In people with normal vision (or corrected-to-normal vision), visual performance tends to be better with light mode, whereas some people with cataract and related disorders may perform better with dark mode. On the flip side, long-term reading in light mode may be associated with myopia.

> we strongly recommend that designers allow users to switch to dark mode if they want to — for three reasons: (1) there may be long-term effects associated with light mode; (2) some people with visual impairments will do better with dark mode; and (3) some users simply like dark mode better.

Native GUIs used to be superior, consistent and respect the user. Adobe lead the way with making a GUI that's a branding experience, completely devolved from the OS theme, and in the last decade most have started following their lead.

Add to that the lack of leadership and cohesion demonstrated by MS when it comes to GUIs. The original Win32 GUI was good, with lots of UX research and user testing behind it, and Borland made a great library and visual designer for it (a major selling point of Delphi). MS copied it for .NET as WinForms. That was the peak. Early to mid 2000s, depending on whether you prefer the Windows 2000 or Windows XP look. Themeable, fast, easy to design and intuitive to use, clear visual language with good user feedback.

Then MS tried to make everything better with WPF. Then they tried again with WinUI, originally coupled to Windows Store apps (remember when MS still believed in that?). But whichever team was responsible for those within MS apparently didn't even have enough authority and resources to move more than a couple high-visibility OS components to it. Not to mention the mediocre features, dev experience and user experience

You can easily implement dark mode in a toolkit, you just add the new colors and switch based on the user preferences. The issue is that a lot of apps hard coded colors against the light background of the widgets. If you can find a solution for that, please share it.

That’s why people like the old windows interface (windows 2k). It was fully themable.

Use reader mode. If you’re this militant, I’m certain your device defaults to dark mode and reader mode will honor that.

Using reader mode is the same thing I have to do with the avalanche of sites now defaulting to unreadable-to-me dark mode.

Books and traffic signs must be a struggle.

Good luck, I guess.