Comment by cosmic_cheese

> First, dark mode is for people who set their screen brightness too high.

Not at all. It became popular mainly because as part of the spread of the flat UI epidemic, the previously non-optional “light mode” OS UI themes all shifted away from midtone colors to blinding stark whites. This meant that monitor brightness settings that had previously been comfortable suddenly weren’t.

On top of this, modern flat UI light mode themes consistently have poorer contrast and delineation than their dark mode counterparts, because higher contrast with darker grays makes flat white UI themes appear “dirty”. So even if the brightness isn’t an issue, your eyes have fewer visual cues to guide them.

Aside from that, on IPS panel monitors lowering brightness past a certain point also greatly lowers color vividness which looks bad, which is why some of us like to keep it maybe not maxed but a bit higher than is comfortable with light mode.