Dark mode: essential or overrated?

I feel like every app needs dark mode these days, but is it actually worth the development effort for smaller projects?

Pros:
- Users expect it
- Easier on the eyes at night
- Looks sleek

Cons:
- Doubles your design/CSS work
- Easy to get wrong (contrast issues, forgotten elements)
- Not everyone uses it

Curious what this community thinks.

Comments (5)

With CSS custom properties, dark mode is much less work than it used to be. Define your colors as variables, swap them with a media query, done.

eve_writes

I'd say it depends on your audience. Developer tools? Dark mode is essential. Recipe blog? Probably not worth the effort.

frank99

The `prefers-color-scheme` media query makes it easy to at least support the OS default. I'd call that the minimum viable dark mode.

carol_dev

It's on the roadmap for this forum! Hopefully coming soon.

alice

test