Comment by hbn
18 hours ago
HDR videos on social media look terrible because the UI isn’t in HDR while the video isn’t. So you have this insanely bright video that more or less ignores your brightness settings, and then dim icons on top of it that almost look incomplete or fuzzy cause of their surroundings. It looks bizarre and terrible.
The alternative is even worse, where the whole UI is blinding you. Plus, that level of brightness isn't meant to be sustained.
The solution is for social media to be SDR, not for the UI to be HDR.
Imo the real solution is for luminance to scale appropriately even in HDR range, kinda like how gain map HDR images can. Scaled both with regards to the display's capabilities and the user/apps intents.
My personal solution would be to cap video brightness to the brightness I selected.
It's good if you have black text on white background, since your app can have good contrast without searing your eyes. People started switching to dark themes to avoid having their eyeballs seared monitors with the brightness high.
For things filmed with HDR in mind it's a benefit. Bummer things always get taken to the extreme.
I only use light themes for the most part, and HDR videos look insane and out of place. If you scroll past an HDR video on Instagram you have a, eyeball-searing section of your screen because your eyes aren't adjusted to looking at that brightness, and then once you scroll it off the screen and you have no HDR content, everything looks dim and muted because you just got flashbanged.
Not sure how it works on Android, but it's such amateur UX on Apple's part.
99.9% of people expect HDR content to get capped / tone-mapped to their display's brightness setting.
That way, HDR content is just magically better. I think this is already how HDR works on non-HDR displays?
For the 0.01% of people who want something different, it should be a toggle.
Unfortunately I think this is either (A) amateur enshittification like with their keyboards 10 years ago, or (B) Apple specifically likes how it works since it forces you to see their "XDR tech" even though it's a horrible experience day to day.
99% of people have no clue what “HDR” and “tone-mapping” mean, but yes are probably weirded out by some videos being randomly way brighter than everything else
Android finally addressed this issue with the latest release. https://9to5google.com/2025/12/02/the-top-new-features-andro...
But isn't it the point? Try looking at a light bulb; everything around it is so much less bright.
OTOH pointing a flaslight at your face is at least impolite. I would put a dark filter on top of HDR vdeos until a video is clicked for watching.
I'm not trying to watch videos or read text on my light bulb
A video of a sunrise, or a firework, or metal being cast, etc feels much more real in HDR. There are legitimate uses.