"Solving a largely imaginary user goal"

Letting the system do things for the user is risky enough. Taking away the unambiguous way to turn the automatism on and off just adds insult to injury. This suggestion is not simplification, it is complication.

I see two true ways to simplify the light/dark/auto switch.

1. Just offer light and dark. No auto. Whether auto works is out of your control anyway. User who know and want auto have to switch manually.

2. Just offer auto on/off. Default is off and off is light mode. User who want dark mode will figure out how to configure their system.

Why does every website even need to provide its own toggle in the first place? How often do people use these, really?

(I don't get the "everything needs to support dark theme" thing either tbh)

New requirement just dropped: "Switch to light mode during more than 50% solar eclipse".

Both Marcin and Lea are ignoring users who have automatic sunset-to-sunrise dark theme switching.

This is not a novelty but a built-in feature called “Auto” Appearance in MacOS, iOS, iPadOS. Similar feature exists in Android and KDE.

Even in the 1990s, developers of the HID specification knew that the keyboard pictured at the bottom of the article was wrong. They wrote in the power management spec that interface devices should conditionally send wake events, and that a dedicated wake key was not necessary. Microsoft said:

"For example, a keyboard could include a special-purpose power management button (for example, “Power”) that, when pressed during a system sleeping state, generates a wake event. Alternatively, the button(s) on mice and other pointing devices could be used to trigger a wake event. "

Well, that's pretty damned moronic, is what that is.

As a user, I find the three "dark", "light", "auto" button situation way less complex then a toggle that keeps its state only if my choice does not align with system default.

Imagine the user confusion when he sets the interface in light mode and a couple of minutes later this changes automatically to dark mode because sun sets.