Light Mode, Dark (Black) Mode, how about a "Dim" Mode

Dear Roon,

the contrast in light mode and dark mode is, well, 100% white or 100% black. This is sometimes hard on my old eyes. I would like to request a true “dark” mode that is not black. In essence a dark grey, or something dim but not 100% black, which would not clash so strongly with the artwork or the Desktop or the Mobile or just life in general – which, as we know, is not just black or white :wink: .

Thank you, and keep up the good work.

-Chris

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As a lover of the dark mode I feel the darker the better. I listen to music in the dark and don’t want unnecessary light coming from my devices. Black also has an advantage of using less battery power and this especially true for AMOLED screens.

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I hear ya. Sometimes it is indeed good to have 100% black levels in the background (as you say, it saves power.) Sometimes though, it’s a bit jarring. Light mode at night is a no-go (burn your retinas out), and I notice that a bit less contrast between Roon (the contents, text, images, etc.) and background would be nice (dark grey, for example, would be nice.)

-C

High contrast modes (i.e. light and dark) usually require only design work, as opposed to programmatic work.

Non-high contrast modes usually require surprising amounts of programmatic work to keep text legible, especially when backgrounds are unpredictable in terms of color and intensity.

While other modes might be nice, as a customer, I’d far prefer that the roon team’s programming efforts be directed to more profound work.

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Hi Akimo,

I see that quite a few applications I use have dark modes that aren’t black (and that’s all they have, white and something dark that’s not quite black), and then there are some music players (for example GoneMAD) that have a dozen different themes, and let you make your own (which I wasn’t suggesting all! The Squeezeboxen ofcourse let you select whatever you want in any color you wan’t, but that’s beyond the point.)

If that is indeed the case, that it’s difficult to make a dark (grey, whatever) background, then I certainly am the first to say no problemo!

-C

What is the use of more profound work when a lot of people can not see it. I for one can not read lines of white text on black.background.for more then 30 seconds before the letters literally floating above the page in my eyes. The dark mode is an absolute no no for me. I can not read the artist and album reviews not in light, not in dark mode I have adressed this before but it is waved away by everybody as nonsense and there has never been any reaction from the Roon team. It is not nonsense. I can not read it, just can’t so the reviews are completely useless to me. So please don’t judge for someone else before you accuse someone of wanting to steal.precious development time of the Roon team.

I’m sorry to hear that you have some visual condition that makes high contrast reading difficult.

When you wrote “a lot of people” was that speculative, or have you seen something concrete that informed that? If so, I suspect the roon team would take that into account. Please let them know for priority setting.

Besides personal preference, the affect of contrast on legibility and eye-strain is well known, such that many operating systems and applications allow for the adjustment of said contrast. It (the effect of contrast) changes with the conditions that that which is being viewed (in the case of Roon text and images) is being seen in, be it from bright natural daylight to dim indoor artificial lighting, or ofcourse a completely dark environment (say listening to your DAP or mobile in bed at night.)

I’m quite happy Roon has not just a bright white mode, it also has a deep black mode. This is a good start, and these days the awareness of UI design is such that at least these two display modes are present in ever more applications.

Quite a few UI designs also offer a bit more, something in between black and white, and Roon would profit from the addition as well.

-C

Any development to this? Light and Dark mode will stay but it is nice to have a slightly lighter dark because the contrast of pure white characters on a full black background hurts the eyes.

Something like this which Adobe calls “Dark Gray”.

Dark (Top), Dark Gray (Bottom):
image

Yes! Dark Grey, exactly.

The LED-light from screens kills you melatonine levels and your chances of a fully recovering sleep (if you listen within a few hours of going to bed).

How do you enable / switch between light and dark mode? I don’t see it anywhere on my iMac Roon Remote.

You can find it under:

Settings > Setup > Theme