You’ve asked for it, and you shall receive it. Dark mode is finally coming to Android phones, with the feature likely to debut later this year when Android P is unveiled during Google I/O in May. Google has not announced anything about its future Android P release, but Redditors have already noticed that a dark mode entry in Google’s public issue tracking system was just marked as “fixed.”
In late November, an Android user asked for a dark mode/night mode on Google’s issue tracker:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Dark Mode / Black displays on OLED Screens vastly improves Battery Life on Android Phones. Please kindly add a Dark Mode or Night Theme in Android 9.0 that we can set under “Settings” in Android 9.0. Currently, only by installing 3rd party apps can we enable this Dark Mode.
Thank You!!!
The feature was quickly shared with Google’s engineering team, and someone marked it as fixed a few hours ago:
Our engineering team has added this feature. It will be available in a future Android release.
That’s all we know for the time being. Google may include it in a future Oreo update, but dark mode does sound like the kind of major feature the company would want to advertise for Android P later this year.
Once enabled, dark mode will indeed work best on devices with OLED screens, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note phones or Google’s Pixels. Of course, existing Pixel phones that will benefit from it long before any other Android-powered phone, as Pixel phones are the first to receive access to new Android releases. Even the Pixel 3 will launch with dark mode support well before the Galaxy S9 gets its Android P update.
