The eternal battle between light and darkness may have just ended and darkness has won. At least on Android.
According to Android Authority, there is a hidden setting in a beta version of Android 14 released in January, allowing you to “make all apps dark.”
Yes, this means users should be able to force all apps into dark mode, even those that don’t natively support it, thus completing the darkening of their Android phones. As a long-time dark mode connoisseur, I use it as much as possible and avert my eyes in pain from any app that blinds me with anything lighter than a very dark gray.
The setting, which resides in the Settings -> System -> Developer option, is described as follows: “Applies to apps without their own dark theme. Some apps may have display issues, such as inverted colors.”
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This is similar to an existing developer option that also applies a dark theme to all apps, but developers can turn this off. Likewise, there is an option to invert colors in the Accessibility settings, but this often gives strange results.
The new setting seems to be aimed at users, not developers, and gives better results, although according to Android Authority, which has an app gallery with a force-applied dark mode, it’s still not perfect.
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The feature isn’t available in the latest Android 15 beta, but it will likely appear in a future release, possibly during Google I/O 2024, scheduled for May 14.
