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I spent 4 years defending my app's dark mode toggle, then deleted it last week
Built this habit tracker in 2021 with a huge settings page full of toggles. Dark mode was one of them, along with accent color pickers and animation speeds. I always said users need control. Last week I watched my mom try to find the dark mode switch for 90 seconds while standing in a bright kitchen. She finally gave up and said this app is too complicated. So I killed the toggle, set it to follow the phone's system setting, and hid the color options one level deeper. The whole settings menu went from 4 screens to 1. My test group of 12 people all found what they needed in under 20 seconds after the change. Has anyone else cut features that felt sacred just because real users got lost in them?
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michaelcoleman9d ago
Two years ago I argued with a guy on Reddit for an hour about why removing options was lazy design. Then I watched my dad squint at a font size slider for five minutes and never touch the app again. Now I say if a setting needs a tutorial, it is not a feature, it is a bug.
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