Drop the System button: your theme toggle only needs two states

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Web developer and standards advocate Lea Verou has argued in a new post that the common three-option theme toggle — Light, Dark, and System — exposes internal developer logic rather than serving actual user needs. Her core reasoning is that users only reach for a theme toggle when the current appearance is wrong for them, making a 'follow system' button redundant in that moment. She proposes a two-state toggle that stores no preference by default, writes light or dark only when the user overrides their OS setting, and clears that override if the user toggles back to match the OS. Crucially, the stored preference should never be silently cleared just because the OS setting happens to align with it later. Verou does allow for a full three-option control inside dedicated settings panels, but argues it has no place in a site's main header or footer.

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