Spring is coming and we have more hours of sun, or light at least, so I’ve been suffering headaches and pain around my eyes –likely to be eye strain–. My solution for this has always been closing the curtain so I can keep doing my work –that requires staring to a computer screen–. Is not living in darkness, but I was avoiding bright light into my eyes.
I’ve been using a dark theme in my terminal and my editor, that is what I use most when I’m programming, since forever. Can’t put a date, but over 20 years ago. I always found the black background more comfortable, and my screens have already very low brightness.
And over the years the “dark themes” have become more popular, and now virtually everything from your computer to your phone can be done in a dark theme; some websites (like this blog!) even support both light and dark themes depending on the settings of the user –the browser chooses the right CSS–.
There is also an aesthetic consideration: it just looks better to me.
But I know as well that there is some scientific proof that dark themes aren’t really the best for people with astigmatism –and to some extent myopia–. Essentially because a dark mode requires your pupils to dilate, which can make it harder to focus on the screen, resulting as well on the foreground content bleeding into the dark background and making it hard to read –specially with small fonts–. And that can lead to eye strain.
For some time now I have my phone configured to use both dark and light themes, depending on the time of the day: during the day hours it will use a light theme, and during the night hours a dark theme. And turns out I can see the screen better during the day!
So I have been running an experiment with the work laptop –that I use during the day–, and changed everything from a dark theme to a light one. Because I’m using the excellent gruvbox-material, it was very easy to switch my editor.
Gruvbox Material (light version)
After a couple of days in which I didn’t close the curtains, I think I can feel the benefits: no eye pain or headaches! So I have decided to transition completely, including in my personal machine, with the caveat that it requires me now to ensure that I always have good lighting when I’m using the computer –specially at night–, so the bright light coming out of the screen is not causing other problems.
Perhaps Gurvbox is not the most popular theme, but is popular enough that you can find settings for most popular applications. In my case there is already a theme built-in in WezTerm, and it was easy to find a theme for tmux.
Then I had to set my desktop to use a light theme, and everything else changed, with the exception of my i3 theme, that for now I’m keeping with the Gruvbox dark theme because looks great and is a very small portion of the screen that won’t affect my eyes.
I’ve never been an advocate for dark themes –use whatever works for you and leave me alone!–, and this post is not me recommending a light theme. It works for me and I wanted to share the experience.