Google may be the one that develops the Android platform but, in some cases, it can lag considerably behind other manufacturers when it comes to popular features and practices. The official and vanilla Android implementation does eventually catch up to some but not always as how users hope they would be. A prime and recent example is system-wide Dark Mode introduced in Android 10 that, much to users’ dismay, couldn’t be automatically triggered based on time. Google developers have given their reasons why but may have finally found a way to deliver that functionality in Android 11.
The touted benefits of Dark Mode are two-fold. First is to help conserve battery life especially for phones with OLED screens, though the exact savings are still debated. The other is to help lessen the strain on users’ eyes, especially at night time when they should reduce exposure to blue light. That last bit would make better sense if Dark Mode could be toggled automatically depending on the time of day but that wasn’t the case in the final release of Android 10.
In a past Reddit AMA, developers responded to questions about why Android 10 didn’t have that functionality when the Android Q betas did. The bottom line was that the system was too unreliable and difficult to maintain for all of Android, even if OEMs could pull off such a feature with their subset of devices. Given how Google took its time to even bring system-wide Dark Mode official to Android in the first place, it’s still a win even if it requires manual toggling.
Movement in Android’s bug tracker now reveals that a suitable solution has finally been found. It will, in fact, be included in a “future Android release”. While the hope is definitely on Android 11, it doesn’t discount the possibility that it could arrive even later.
There are, of course, other ways to scheduling Dark Mode, ranging from third-party apps to Tasker. Of course, those come with their own caveats and Google always has to keep the entirety of Android in mind when implementing standard features. Hopefully, though, we can put a close on this brief chapter next year.
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