Reflecting on 20 years of dark mode

100% Human written. No LLM.

I was using Microsoft To-Do web app. I accidentally clicked settings and noticed that it had a dark mode option (I currently had it in light mode). I normally prefer dark mode. So I decided to press it. But for some reason I disliked it immediately. It was too dark and didn’t feel like a Microsoft application any more. So I switched back.

I was a bit shocked that I preferred the light mode. It made me think, how long have I preferred dark mode. I remembered creating a Reddit userstyle a long time ago. Luckily I remembered the name and luckily Google still indexed the page. The page no longer loaded but I could put it to the Wayback Machine. You can view it here.

That userstyle will be 20 years old in just 2 months. For over two decades I have preferred dark mode. Using custom userstyles created by others and then finally creating one myself for Reddit. I still prefer dark mode and have it enabled for every app. Well almost every app.