New Dark Theme colors are heavy on eyes

[kepi]

I just received update of riot-web app and I like the redesign. Unfortunately color combination in dark theme is extremely heavy on eyes.

One of main points of dark themes is to safe our eyes, but especially main chat area is complete opposite. In fact it is almost easier on my eyes to switch to light theme.

I'm not sure of exact color combination, but chat area in previous version was ok, list of rooms is ok, but chat area currently is not. Maybe text color is too white, maybe background is too dark...

[kepi]

One observation after 30 minutes usage: maybe biggest problem is font size, which is simply too small with used fonts and color combination. I would probably survive it longer without notice when font is bigger.

Is there any option to change size of fonts? I tried to search for it but without success.

[tompinzler]

maybe biggest problem is font size, which is simply too small

I second that

[fbruetting]

Yeah, we really need a bigger font size. Older people otherwise will have problems, and still for me with good sight it’s too small for being comfortable. Here’s a comparison with Wire and WhatsApp – the x size of Riots font is far smaller than the other’s:

[progserega]

Colors was not such contrast in old dark theme.
New dark them is very heavy for eyes :-(

Grey color in old theme is very nice. Do you can add third theme - grey, as was in old riot version?

[lampholder]

We've made dark theme a little less dark - could you take another look and let us know what you think?

[progserega]

We've made dark theme a little less dark - could you take another look and let us know what you think?

Where are I can test it?
On riot.im - steel old dark theme...

[jryans]

Do you mean riot.im/develop or riot.im/app? (/develop is newer and likely includes additional tweaks.)

[progserega]

We've made dark theme a little less dark - could you take another look and let us know what you think?
Do you mean riot.im/develop or riot.im/app? (/develop is newer and likely includes additional tweaks.)

I do not see any color changes in develop version.

[skerit]

Huh. I started using Riot a few days ago, so I never saw the old dark theme in action.

I was actually thinking about creating an issue regarding the dark theme being too dark, so it's quite a surprise to see that the previous colors actually looked better :/

[lampholder]

We're planning to address this by dividing dark theme into "dark theme" and "black theme".

[unclechu]

I'd like to have a feature to set custom CSS in advanced settings section so I could customize specific theme (by selectors like html.riot-dark-theme for instance or html[data-theme=dark]).

[aaronraimist]

@unclechu make sure you put a thumbs up on #4482, that is the issue for that

[SilverWolf32]

Personally, I think the current background colors are absolutely perfect! Now, the controls could use some slight tweaking (especially the very bright borders of text boxes and such), but it'd be great if you could leave an option for these background colors as well. (:

Edit: Not pure black -- that'd be too dark.

[fti7]

Its really too dark :-( especially the Box with the Messages.
Checkout the Discord Theming where the Message Box is lighter than the Navigation. Its much better for the Eyes.

As i know there are Users which really like totally Dark Themes, i would also vote for an Dark and Black Theme split

[codic12]

I really need this, I'm wling to use custom css if anyone knows how (ON the desktop app)
the old one looks awesome, any way to use it rn?

[abhishekgupta92]

Any progress on the black theme? :-)

[0lm]

could we also get the ability to edit the colours ourself? the dark theme, as many said, really is heavy on eyes. the current theme is not really dark theme, but it is black theme. black and white contrast is too strong for eyes.
dark would be maybe dark grey? and sepia coloured font? that would be more eye-friendly. A user posted a screnshot of the old riot dark theme here. Would be awesome if you could re-add this again in element, its really eye friendly.

[ShadowJonathan]

From #18116; I think the contrast between the background and foreground is a large factor here. Compare the following two;

Image

With this;

Image

Element currently is nearly pure black (#000000) on pure white (#ffffff), decreasing that contrast a lot would probably help.

Additionally/alternatively; The current theme could be rebranded as a "Pure Black" theme, while a less harsher "grey" theme could be introduced. When GitHub introduced native dark theme switching, it differentiated between its old(?) pure black theme, and a newer greyer theme.