Google might allow Android users to schedule Dark Mode in Android 11

Dark Mode has gained a lot of attention in the past couple of years. This has been mainly due to the advantages Dark Mode has like battery optimizations and being easier on the eyes. While apps were the first to adopt Dark Mode, with Android 10, Google brought system-wide Dark Mode support for users.

However, Google did miss out on a crucial add-on to the Dark Mode which was the ability to set up a schedule for Dark Mode. What’s more surprising is that the feature was available in Android 10 Beta but was removed before the final version was released. In an AMA earlier this year, Google noted that the feature would negatively impact the user experience as it would restart apps when the Dark Mode was implemented.

During the AMA, Chris Banes from the Android Developer Relations team also revealed that the feature was deprecated in AppCompat v1.1.0 because it “requires apps to request location permissions to be accurate, and even with a valid location the sunrise/sunset time calculations can be buggy and calculating sunrise/sunsets are notoriously difficult, especially for locations close to north/south poles.” When he was asked about similar functionality available for Night Light since Android 7.1, he stated that since Night Light uses CalendarAstronomer from ICU4J, it uses a “big chunk of code which we wouldn’t want AppCompat to depend on.”

On the Google Issue Tracker, a Google engineer recently confirmed that the feature would be added to a future release indicating the availability in Android 11. For now, you will need to manually toggle Dark Mode or if you’re the creative type then XDA Developers have a handy tutorial on how to schedule Dark Mode on Android 10.

Via XDA Developers