tst123Coming from nestle of all people
HatchetHaroOn LCD displays dark mode actually uses more electricity; the brightness is always there, and you need to power the liquid-crystal layer to block that light to result in darker colours.
This whole myth about darker screens saving energy goes way back to the old CRT days when it actually did save some energy.
I use NixOS btw Many phones have OLED displays, which physically turn off the pixels in black areas. Since the site is on mobile, it does make a bit of sense.
HolzkohlenBut then most dark modes aren’t pitch black. I guess it might save a bit of power by just being at a low brightness. Anyways I need my dark mode and also night mode.
Less brightness means less light emitted by the diodes means less power is used. They may not turn off, but they still use less.
Fun fact! Many OLED displays dim the whole image not by making the diodes dimmer, but by pulsing the diodes fast enough to match the desired brightness of each pixel.
You can test this by taking your OLED phone, pulling up an image, and then waving it around at different brightness levels; the observed image would become blurry at high brightness levels, but would separate into distinct “frames” at lower brightness.
I’m not sure if every OLED does this; just from the phones that I have used.