I would just like to add my opinion on the matter. After quite a long career in VFX, I’ve been carefully picking a game engine to learn to eventually shift my focus. While Unity was my best candidate, I’ve ended up going with Unreal Engine, and it was the choice of putting Dark UI theme behind a paywall that greatly influenced my decision.
It’s extremely important to understand that Dark UI theme is found in most of the modern professional software application not as a demonstration of prestige, but rather as a means of reducing eye strain after working long hours, especially in evening/night hours. It’s not a matter of showing off your new black metallic car paint that has costed 1000 bucks more then the next guy’s stock retail car paint job, but really a means of making visual ergonomics of the software work.
Decision to throw as essential feature as UI dark theme into a same bag with things like cloud integration, heavy duty multiplayer features or advanced analytics and monetization features, along with the fact that 6 years old request to revert this stance, which has been backed up with over !10000! votes still remains unheard, shows the kind of derogatory attitude from the developers I do not want to be part of.
So here are my two cents. In my humble opinion, there are a lot of people for whom these things really matter, and you may be losing a big chunk of potential userbase.
I know that this thread will be locked in no time, but I want you to know that it’ll not be because of everyone is refusing to believe that it’s an important issue, but because it’s already been discussed before million times.
If I’m not mistaken, majority of people believe it’d be better if they include the dark theme in Personal Edition, including me.
I’m not sure if or when they’ll change their mind. But in the meantime, you can check out this free asset with which you can make your dark theme without much hassle:
Well, this is really stupid. And btw I am not sorry to say this, because to limit your users with the UI, something that every software gives it to you for free not only the giant companies lime MS and visual Studio but lot of free softwares, that’s sad, seriously! Unity really needs to start thinking about that, and as they are trying to tell us “we listen your feedback” and “we do everything for our users/customers” nope you don’t do that for us. Obviously this is very wanted thing and it’s nothing about earning something from exactly this feature or whatever. And don’t get me wrong I love your software, and everything you do, but come on a Dark UI?
We can easily start using cracked ones, but what do you think about that? Pushing your users doing it? Just for this Dark UI? Can’t believe that after years we still don’t have this thing. I will be honest I crack unity for myself, cuz I can’t use it with the normal theme. Everything on my PC that has dark UI is ON with it. Whole My mac, visual studio, Opera, MS Office, Photoshop Final cut pro, etc…
Actually, scientific studies show that dark and light backgrounds do not have a different affect on eye strain. It is the blue light that is the problem. Adjust your screen, if you can, or use a blue light filter or blue light glasses.
I think the dark thing is psychological, honestly.
Besides, the Plus version of Unity is very reasonable. If this is important to you, you should be willing to shell out a bit of money. Other engines take royalties…not giving you a choice.
Some of us love watching some folks crack into pieces, make idle threats and throw their toys out of the playpen over a frikkin’ dark UI scheme. Trophies for participation to everybody! Excuse my mocking tone but the same level of righteous and unjustified indignation has been tried umpteen times to abject failure. None of the pros i work with give a hoot one way or another. Many use Pro with the light UI.
Of course, everyone has their own tastes. I personally prefer dark themes. I do not know how much and how it is proven, but the simplest example of/for the eye is a white board with a black marker and vice versa. It is easier to read when the board is black and the marker is white and does not irritate the eyes.
I think the jarring against the black VS is the biggest reason to use a darker theme. I am not a coder so for me, I prefer the lighter theme, gray is perfect for me.
Eyes are all different. I have a more difficult time seeing white print on black, probably because of my older eyes.
If I could just make everything gray, I would be thrilled.
I can understand how some people don’t care about UI theme one way or another, but that doesn’t mean it’s not really an issue for everyone.
I’m using Zios myself but without it, Unity is about the only significant application that doesn’t offer a dark variant of theme on my whole desktop - KDE desktop itself, IntelliJ, Eclipse, Ardour, Blender, Inkscape, GIMP, Firefox, LibreOffice, Spotify, and almost everything except Unity on my desktop either uses a native theme of the desktop or supports a dark UI theme. So Unity stands out very badly when I don’t use Zios asset.
I imagine those who don’t use a dark desktop theme less likely to be bothered by this issue. But if you do, like myself, you usually try to keep all your applications to match the theme.
It might not be so bad if you use a lighter desktop theme and you have a single dark themed application. But if you use a dark desktop theme and there’s some application that has a bright color, you can’t help but feeling distracted.
Erm. Unity owes you nothing and is not obliged to provide access to the software at all. Enjoy what you have. People already provided links to an UI mod anyway.
In my experience the best choice is Black on gray or white on gray. Or green on black. White on black is fairly unpleasant.
The difference between screen and chalk + blackboard, by the way, is that blackboard does not glow. Your screen does. Now, if you’re using unity on an E-Ink display, that’ll be another story.
Unity needs to release green on pink theme and make it available only to pro users who spent X dollars on asset store purchases. People will probably complain about that too.
Lol. Or green on red since christmas is around the corner. On top of that, they could strap a “Unity - Limited Edition Theme” on the header and enjoy the 20% increase in subs/forums complaining activity.
