Post

QQ about Dark Mode Toggles on websites How many options do you show to users? - Three values: System, Light, or Dark - Two values: Light, Dark (with one of them mapping to “System” behind the scenes). Why the one or the other? (I have an opinion about it, but I’m looking for external input)

Luke

@lukewarlow.dev

Three values, follow system is quite different intent wise from picking a specific theme. If my system automatically changes at night to dark mode I want that behaviour. But also I light want this specific site to always remain light mode.

4/8/26, 10:57 am0 reposts13 likes

Jake Lazaroff

@jakelazaroff.com

4 Aug

as a developer, same. as a (tech savvy) user, i really just want browsers to easily let me override prefers-color-scheme on a per-website basis

Luke

@lukewarlow.dev

4 Aug

Yup user agents should give users some agency.

What a wild concept

Blasphemous I know. But failing them giving the user an option they should give developers better primitives to implement it. Like say scripting control of preference media queries 😉.

Luke

@lukewarlow.dev

4 Aug

One thing I see more than I'd like is two values and none of them are system it just defaults to a value and you can toggle it but never have it obey system. This is very silly.