Dark theme makes smartphones and laptops drain faster, contrary to popular belief

Using apps and websites in dark mode may actually result in more, rather than less, power being used by the device compared to the standard mode. Dark mode forces users to increase the brightness in the display settings.

A surprising discovery was made by researchers at BBC Research & Development — they found that, contrary to popular advice to turn on the dark theme to save energy, switching to it can actually make things worse. British engineers conducted an experiment: they asked volunteers to open the BBC Sounds media platform and adjust the screen brightness to a comfortable level for the resource’s light and dark themes.

When switching to a dark theme, 80% of the experiment participants significantly increased the brightness of the display, thereby actually increasing the energy consumption of the device. This prompted the experiment organizers to question the thesis that the dark version contributes to energy savings. Then the engineers decided not to limit themselves to the issue of the color theme and investigated the connection between energy efficiency and such aspects as the speed of the resource and the amount of data transferred to it. As practice has shown, in the first case there was no connection at all, in the second it turned out to be insignificant.

For users concerned about climate change, or those who simply want to keep their gadgets’ energy consumption to a minimum, the study’s authors recommended taking more obvious steps: turning down the brightness on your phone or laptop, or switching to smaller devices.