Is Dark mode a Greener mode?

Worried about eye strain in digital life and workstations? There is a good chance that by now you have tuned into the dark mode in at-least one of the applications in mobiles be Whatsapp, YouTube, facebook, wynk etc. New mobile applications do give this feature prominently. Yes, it makes life easy especially in low light room when you don't want to bother other people :) .

????????????????Desktop applications also have started rolling out this feature quite recently. Still there is the long way in wide adoption of dark mode. Process of opting is still cumbersome. When I tried same on desktop application, browser; it was quite tedious. For google chrome and microsoft edge, process includes downloading additional extensions and putting in place necessary settings.

??????????????????For the records, dark text on a white background (aka light mode) became the standard for most digital interfaces with the rise of word processors, which emulated the look of ink on paper.??Black text on a white background is best, since the color properties and light are best suited for the human eye.?White text on a black background, or ‘dark mode,’ makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. Yes,?dark mode works amazingly well in low light situation to reduce eye strain.?But, the bright light from our screens is linked to digital eye strain as well as symptoms such as dry eyes, blurry vision, headaches, and sleeplessness.?

??????????????????As dark mode rose in popularity in recent years, one of the benefits touted in marketing was its ability to save battery life. Still there is no concrete proof to establish energy saving credentials of Dark mode:? There is a lot of research trying to establish apple to apple comparison. Work is in progress to device tools/apps that can help app developers make UI that consumes lesser power. Tools like 'FPOP' (Per-Frame OLED Power Profiler), allows app designers to study how a user interface settings — such as dark mode — can have an impact on power draw in real time. Android battery+ will helps developers build apps considering the dark mode effects on battery life. Tools built into Apple’s Xcode and Google’s Android Studio within the last few years measure the energy impact of various code implementations, and warn developers in real time what the consequences of a particular choice will be. Code keeping the network connected but not sending anything, for example, now warns developers of the impact on the user’s smartphone battery. As consumers, both developers and not, we should be aware of this?too.?

?????????????????Smartphones that came out after 2017 likely have an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen.?Because this type of screen doesn’t have a backlight like the LCD (liquid crystal display) screens of older phones, the screen will draw less power when displaying dark-colored pixels. OLED displays also allow phone screens to be ultrathin, flexible and foldable.?Compared to LCD, the power an OLED display draws from a battery more directly reflects on-screen content. That allows the developers of an app or operating system to design a user interface that uses darker colors — with the aim of making their software more energy-efficient.?

?????????????????The Purdue study found that switching from light mode to dark mode at 100% brightness (Yes, in auto mode screen brightness shoots to 100% outdoor on bright sunny day :) ) saves an average of 39%-47% battery power. So turning on dark mode while your phone’s screen is that bright could allow your phone to last a lot longer than if you had stayed in light mode. But we need a variable called screen brightness in a mix. Users require higher brightness in dark/night mode. Using the Google?News app in light mode at 20% brightness on the Pixel 5, for example, draws the same amount of power as when the phone is at 50% brightness in dark mode. So if looking at your phone in dark mode is easier on your eyes, but you need the higher brightness to see better, you don’t have to worry about this brightness level taking more of a toll on your phone’s battery life. Many people use their phone’s default auto-brightness setting, which tends to keep brightness levels around 30%-40% most of the time when indoors. At 30%-50% brightness, Purdue researchers found that switching from light mode to dark mode saves only 3%-9% power on average for several different OLED smartphones. Higher the brightness when switching from light mode to dark mode, the higher the energy savings.

??????????????????The obvious conclusion is, if you have a smartphone with an LCD (not uncommon) or laptop or tablet with an LCD (almost universal), dark mode has no impact on battery life.?OLED screens actually turn off pixels in dark mode, which draws no power, while LCD screens use the same amount of power regardless of dark mode vs. light mode.?

???????????????????The verdict? You may extend your battery life a bit using dark mode, but your individual contribution to save the planet is limited.?For OLED smartphone we can expect around 3-9% saving on average. That is good if you consider 15 crores smartphones were sold in India in 2020 alone.?Indians used about 12 GB data per month on average in 2019,?the highest consumption globally, and this is expected to double to over the next five years, driven by affordable mobile broadband services and changing video viewing habits, according to telecom gear maker Ericsson. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimated in a 2012 study that the?energy impact of data in real terms is?about 5.12 kilowatt hours per gigabyte?of data consumed.?The current digital consumption globally is “very polarised”. In 2018 and on average, an inhabitant of the United States owned nearly 10 connected digital peripheral devices and consumed about 140 Gigabytes (GB) of data a month whereas an Indian owned one and consumed 2 GB. Hence, the digital carbon footprint of an American is 16 times larger than that of an inhabitant of a developing country and five times larger than the world average.?

?????????????????????But for LCD desktops/laptops almost nothing as energy saving with dark mode.?Energy saving techno-commercials are not yet there. So for now choose dark mode for laptop only if it suits you. You can try out night light settings in windows to filter out blue light. You can find similar eye protection filters for desktop applications.?

:)