Android N Dev Preview Brings Back Dark Mode, Adds Native Night Mode

Feel the power of the dark side!

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Adding on to the list of reasons why you should have purchased that Nexus is the inclusion of night mode and the return of the dark mode in the Android N Developer Preview images.

What is night mode, you ask? Night mode is a simple term to denote the shift in colors of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum. The main aim is to reduce blue light emitted from the screen, as it is believed to cause disruption in natural sleep cycles. This is oriented towards the increased usage of smartphones during the night time with no other light source except your display.

Night mode is not a new thing on Android though. If you had root, you could use screen filter apps like Chainfire‘s CF.lumen. Many custom ROM’s already had this functionality baked in under different names. All of these do the same thing, i.e. reduce the blue light on your screen to remove the coolness and increase screen warmth.

Android N’s Developer Preview also sees the return of the famed Dark Mode. Dark mode was last seen in the Android M Developer Previews, but was notably missing in the consumer Android 6.0 Marshmallow release. With the inclusion of this feature back into N Dev Preview, we at least know that Google has not entirely ditched the idea of a dark theme for the system.

The presence of automatic night mode switch which toggles dark themes as well ties in with one of the recent Support Library Posts which advised app developers to build in dark themes in their app. Having a specialized dark mode for the app will help to properly apply a consistent dark experience throughout the UI without any design errors.

Night mode along with the dark theme works in the favor of a few of us nocturnal creatures. Of course, you still need a supported Nexus device to flash this build. We hope the future isn’t too dark for the dark mode and the rest of the Android public gets to experience these on their devices as well.

What are your thoughts on the inclusion of native night mode and the return of the dark theme mode on Android N? Let us know in the comments below!