Post

Bramus
@bram.us

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)

jeremAIas
@jeremias.codes

Three values. Always. The other one has the problem of masking the third state (system) which once manually set by the user is impossible to reset to.

jeremAIas
@jeremias.codes

That is a UX smell for me, you don’t know *why* users clicked on the light option while being on light mode. Maybe they do want to lock it there for the time being.

Max Duval
@mxdvl.com

Fair, but as I commented in another thread I cannot guarantee that their choice will be respected as their cookies or local storage get cleared after a week of not visiting, and I have very few sporadic visitors! I also struggle to meaningfully dinstinguish between two identically visual states

Bramus
@bram.us

But that could surprise users. Imagine this: - OS set to auto-switch light/dark depending on time of day - visit during the day, see light - Using the control, try out dark but don't like it and revert back to light - visit again at night Your site is now dark, although the user chose light.

Max Duval
@mxdvl.com

Indeed, I wish I had more visitors that provided me feedback, but this works for me and I’m an auto-switcher. That being said if they do not visit my site for over a week their local storage is likely to be cleared anyways so I cannot guarantee their preference is actually saved for the long run.