I always preferred the light theme and never figured what's the fuss with the dark theme. Until cataract came.

In May of 2024 my ophthalmologist confirmed what I surmised: both of my eyes were affected by cataract. It came earlier than my age would suggest but that's apparently not unusual.

I realized something was off when I noticed everything looked blurry, faded, and washed out as if seen through glass coated with yellowish dirt. The view was often immersed in more glare than the lighting conditions would imply. My old prescription glasses not only didn't help, they made things worse. What surprised and initially worried me were the occasional changes in the intensity of the blurriness and fading, which took place over the course of days whereas eyesight usually changes over years.

My ophthalmologist scheduled cataract operations for mid November and mid December of 2024. The only thing I could do was wait. But I faced the challenge of reading computer and mobile screens through such an unpleasant filter.

My daily driver is a Linux PC on the desktop and a Pixel 7 Pro phone on mobile. On the computer screen most text of websites or Linux programs was hardly legible with the light theme. The beautiful designs of some light theme sites featuring subtle shades, low contrast, or small fonts made reading a nightmare. Coming close to the screen and bending in search of an angle that could help make out something left my back aching in the evening.

Surprisingly to me, the dark theme improved legibility. I set the dark theme everywhere I could: in Linux programs; in Forefox; and on the websites that offered a choice.

The worst experience came from Gmail on the web. Its dark theme is a cruel joke as it doesn't affect the body of email messages, which is what I spend the most time reading. Invert Colors, an open source Firefox add-on that inverts the colors of any web page at the press of a keychord, tamed Gmail and made message bodies bearable. Thanks Max!

The legibility of text was initially less of an issue with the light theme on mobile. I still had to increase the font size one notch larger than the default in the Android system settings. And I eventually had to turn on dark mode too.

In the fall of 2024 the cataract surgeries finally came and I could see the world with new eyes, literally.

The detail, sharpness, and depth my eyes now deliver make the view almost hyperreal. For example, since the left eye gained a visual acuity of 20/20 I can read tiny text, whereas the same eye always struggled to read newspaper and magazine headlines, barely. Even my ophthalmologist couldn't believe it.

It's been a few days since the second cataract operation and I finally stowed my glasses in a drawer for good, restored the light theme on all devices, uninstalled Invert Colors, and set the font size back to the default on the phone. But I see the light about the dark theme.

Christmas is days away and this is the best present I could ever hope for. Cataract surgery is an underrated miracle of medicine.

#personal

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