What is HDR, anyway?

As a photographer, I get the appeal of (this new incarnation of) HDR content, but the practical reality is that the photos I see posted in my feeds go from making my display looking normal to having photos searing my retinas, while other content that was uniform white a second prior now looks dull gray.

It's late night here so I was reading this article in dark mode, at a low display brightness - and when I got to the HDR photos I had to turn down my display even more to not strain my eyes, then back up again when I scrolled to the text.

For fullscreen content (games, movies) HDR is alright, but for everyday computing it's a pretty jarring experience as a user.

Completely agree. To me, HDR feels like the system is ignoring my screen brightness settings.

I set my screen brightness to a certain level for a reason. Please don’t just arbitrarily turn up the brightness!

There is no good way to disable HDR on photos for iPhone, either. Sure, you can turn off the HDR on photos on your iphone. But then, when you cast to a different display, the TV tries to display the photos in HDR, and it won’t look half as good.