> Despite spending hours a day looking at her phone, she literally had to check it to find out what her default color theme is; it’s that invisible to her.
Sounds like a good reason to make it automatic then, because if users have to find your state toggle in some hamburger menu, they're not going to use it if they don't even know the system has a theme applied.
I read this up until the monospaced use of the term `localStorage`, which for me (Firefox on Android) got rendered with a white background but did not invert the font, making it unreadable without highlighting it. I don't think I'm interested in someone's take on light versus dark theme if they don't seem to actually know how to make their own website work right with dark theme.
If the site defaults to system (which isn't guaranteed), very few people will need the toggle, at which point it can be omitted, or at least hidden deep in settings, and there is no need to put so much thought into its design.
Having a light mode and a dark mode as the target of the setting, makes it impossible to use a light area versus a dark area to meaningfully suggest visually which one is selected. This stymies the designer completely, apparently.
There is a weird appeal to authority randomly added at the end of the article. Just because someone with a PhD has an idea on what may be good for users doesn't prove it actually is. Such a decision should be grounded in user studies and telemetry.
> Despite spending hours a day looking at her phone, she literally had to check it to find out what her default color theme is; it’s that invisible to her.
Sounds like a good reason to make it automatic then, because if users have to find your state toggle in some hamburger menu, they're not going to use it if they don't even know the system has a theme applied.
I read this up until the monospaced use of the term `localStorage`, which for me (Firefox on Android) got rendered with a white background but did not invert the font, making it unreadable without highlighting it. I don't think I'm interested in someone's take on light versus dark theme if they don't seem to actually know how to make their own website work right with dark theme.
I think I'd just separate the two things:
``` Theme ( ) Light (•) Dark
[x] Follow system Dark — currently controlled by system ```
When "Follow system" is on, the theme choice is greyed out.
Feels simpler to me, and it scales better if themes ever become more than just light/dark.
Indeed. Or shorter: “auto”
If the site defaults to system (which isn't guaranteed), very few people will need the toggle, at which point it can be omitted, or at least hidden deep in settings, and there is no need to put so much thought into its design.
Having a light mode and a dark mode as the target of the setting, makes it impossible to use a light area versus a dark area to meaningfully suggest visually which one is selected. This stymies the designer completely, apparently.
There is a weird appeal to authority randomly added at the end of the article. Just because someone with a PhD has an idea on what may be good for users doesn't prove it actually is. Such a decision should be grounded in user studies and telemetry.