Who's using Dark Mode?

Just wondering how many are writing their apps in Xojo to support Dark Mode? Personally, I prefer Light Mode. I notice most things work fine, but it seems some of the controls don’t automatically support, at least not in a pleasant way.

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Me because it helps me see my computer screen. I have diabetic related damage to my eyesight, and white text on dark backgrounds is more distinguishable than the inverse.

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The platform you’re using is important. If you’re using macOS, most (if not all) of the built-in controls should just automatically change. Windows has only partial dark mode support for win32 apps (which is what Xojo builds) and Linux is the most troublesome. The fact that the user can select what flavor of UI they use and they all have different mechanisms makes it almost impossible to support.

What controls are you having trouble with?

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I do for my Xojo iOS, MacOS and Windows apps. I don’t personally love dark mode in all cases myself but I’m writing my apps for my users. Actually it surprises me how many of them must use dark mode all the time based on the number of screenshots that I see from users taken during the day but which are running dark mode.

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I have to agree with Tim though. Dark mode is a lot easier on my old eyes.

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I was using a Placard as a container for some smaller controls and I could barely see the controls in it. I think I saw that the Placard has been deprecated, so I changed that out to a Groupbox which fixed that. The one that’s giving me trouble is the TextArea control, it goes dark and the text stays black.

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Are you changing the the text color in the textarea at all?

And… what platform are you running on?

I think like anything else, It’s both personal preference and each individual’s situation.

I wouldn’t mind allowing it in my apps, but I don’t want it creating a ton of work for me.

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I think like anything else, It’s both personal preference and each individual’s situation.

It’s not. Unless you make apps for yourself, your personal preference doesn’t matter. You make apps for others, no? There are things I loathe about modern apps (in-app purchase subscriptions, for one thing), but I recognise I must do what’s expected by my users, not me.

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Honestly I don’t think that it will. For the few things that require manual work, it’s quite easy to accomplish.

The hard part will be if you have lots of custom graphics in your app because those things will need to be recreated with dark variations.

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As far as preference, I was referring to Users, not myself. I do understand I need to create apps that cater to the users.

My software is used by lighting designers and theatrical electricians, who are often working in dark spaces, so Dark Mode has been very high on their wish list for many years. Most Xojo controls do adapt automatically, but a lot of my UI is custom controls. I’ve been slowly working through the hurdles posed on Windows, but my Dark Mode implementation is almost done.

Hopefully Microsoft and Apple won’t throw us any curve balls :slight_smile:

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Honestly I don’t think that it will. For the few things that require manual work, it’s quite easy to accomplish.

I would think that TextArea should be completely automatic, but it’s not working that way for me.

The hard part will be if you have lots of custom graphics in your app because those things will need to be recreated with dark variations.

This makes sense.

Mostly, I’ve been using the standard controls from the Xojo Library, so I am a bit surprised I have to put much work into it.

You still haven’t said what platform you are in or targeting

I only distribute Windows apps and the xojo dark mode on windows is kind of half baked, many contros look awful and if the user changes the theme while the app is already running, complete disaster so, not worth it the trouble. Also dark mode is not really important to me nor to my clients…

Because almost all of the (many) clients that have some degree of visual impairmet use the high contrast mode, not the dark mode. So I had to use a lot of hacks and workarounds in xojo to fully support it.

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I hate DarkMode because it makes my eyes hurt. I do a quick check before releasing my app, curse that Xojo doesn’t change everything back to LightMode and that’s it.

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You still haven’t said what platform you are in or targeting

I’m designing on a Mac, but I try to target Win, Mac and Linux with most of my Apps. The issues I’ve seen since I started playing with this show up on all three.

Personally, like Steve I hate Dark Mode but I get that some scenarios require it, and mobile devices use it as a way to reduce power consumption.

Xojo handles it well enough on the Mac.
I gather that Xojo Windows handles it to some degree now, but Im using 2015 , and I spent a good 4 months finding workarounds to make a Dark Mode possible there, subclassing controls and the like.

I hate dark mode too; makes me headaches very quickly. When websites are in “dark mode”, I use accessibility’s feature of inverting the screen so it comes back in “light mode” (otherwise I wouldn’t read the page without disease very quickly).
I haven’t yet bothered with dark mode support in Xojo. I expect it to work like it should.

Not me; I don’t use it or support it. And I was at a lunch last year where I sat next to a man whose job is to place IT professionals, and another whose IT knowledge extends to turning the computer on. Both said they had heard of dark mode but considered it the silliest thing they’d ever heard of.

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