Hmm - I can quite appreciate the problem, having some post-diabetic retina damag remaininge as well as a degree of lost except in imagination younger times, probably amounting to the same thing.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the ‘cream’ option, as I find only light, dark, and system, which amounts to the same thing.
The dark is pretty dark, but you’re right, it’s a dark grey, as most dark backgrounds are, as pure black can often be a bit harsh to look at.
Here’s what I’ve found recently, though, and it works in Scrivener – very simple.
In general, the iPad hasn’t enough contrast for me, especially when I have brightness set to what seems a sensible level – and one that doesn’t disturb on websites which can’t be handled by browser darkening.
So then in a sort of analytic thought about this one night, I instead turned up the brightness…and found that this gave much better contrast generallly-- and as well for dark background text. It’s not quite counterintuitive – and it works, without ‘blowing out’ to lose the clarity otherwise.
As mentioned, this is quite effective in Scrivener, just tried various levels again to check.
But there’s also another way – and this works for apps which manage not to include any dark screen convenience, like Quicken or LiquidText, the last of which particularly needs it.
The appearance will be a little strange, but yo’u’d be surprised how easily you get used to it, especially now able to read from the screeens with ease.
This is to use the iPadOS Smart Invert color inversion ability. For quick changing to it, you can add the Accessibility Shortcuts button to the pull-from -upper-right-corner command menu. Smart Invert will appear as a checkable item on this menu, and the screen will instantly switch,
The ‘Smart’ aspect tends to limit color inversions to ‘soft look’, so it’s not going to disturb attention where there are photos or color elements.
But playing with it again to write this, I found something which makes Smart Invert much more powerful in Scrivener – and this increase in intensity may be something possibly useful to you:
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if you’re already using Scrivener set to Dark or following System which is Dark, adding the Smart Invert doesn’t increase the effect – it looks the same, or much the same.
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However, if you set Scrivener to Light, then apply Smart Invert, you get a truly black background, from which letters stand out in considerable contrast.
You’ve probably realized that in general, iPadOS apps tend to want you to use your fingers, or be adept with the stylus in certain ways. I’ve found that a quick diagonal swipe down from top right corner easily brings up the Command menu.
Then by placing Accessibility Shortcuts on the outside of one of the rows (via ordering when arranging Command Menu contents in Settings), it’s very easy for the thumb to tap the icon which you’ll soon learn, and then the checkbox item with Smart Invert’s label.
Hope you’ll find in all this what might work for you, @tjward – and I learned something new…
Someday we might find offered (and affordable?) iPads with OLED screens, which can be a lot better at contrast, but until that time, this iPad Air 4 has been very, very good in all other aspects, so it’s good to see how best it can be fit to what it can do for individuals. Some real thought went into that Smart Invert, it feels, compared to its cousin I detected on Windows, which has at least a keyboard access – Ctrl-Winkey-C…
Clive
