Android 16 prepares to make dark mode work with more apps

Although many of the best Android apps have a built-in dark theme, not all of them do. Fitbit, for example, doesn’t have a dark theme, and neither do many finance and shopping apps like PayPal, Walmart, and Amazon. Many users are unhappy about these apps’ lack of dark theme support, as they feel dark-themed apps are more comfortable to view, especially at night. Fortunately, Google is working on a feature for Android 16 that could force these apps to go dark.

In April of last year, I spotted development of a hidden “make all apps dark” feature that I thought would go live in Android 15. This mode forced every app to go dark, even if they didn’t have their own dark theme. It worked in more apps than the existing “override force-dark” toggle found in the Developer Options of most Android devices, suggesting that the “make all apps dark” feature took priority over apps’ requests to disable forced color inversion. Unlike the “override force-dark” toggle, though, the “make all apps dark” feature seemed to do a better job at making certain apps go dark, leading me to believe it wasn’t just blindly inverting colors but rather using a more intelligent method of choosing which elements to change.

For reference, here’s a gallery I prepared last year that compares the UI of several apps without built-in dark themes: no changes applied, “override force-dark” enabled, and “make all apps dark” enabled.

If you’re wondering why I’m talking about a hidden feature of Android 15 that never saw the light of day, it’s because I’ve just seen evidence that Google hasn’t abandoned it. In fact, Google just updated the description and placement of it in Android 16 Beta 1, which suggests that this tool is still in active development.

Previously, the feature was named “make all apps dark” and was located in Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion. In Android 16 Beta 1, however, it’s been renamed to “make more apps dark” and is now located in Settings > Display & touch > Dark theme. It’s still a hidden feature, of course, but with a bit of effort, I managed to manually surface it in Android’s dark theme settings, as shown below.

The description has also been updated in Android 16 Beta 1. Instead of saying that it “applies to apps without their own dark theme. Some apps may have display issues, like inverted colors,” it now states that the feature “automatically convert[s] light-themed apps to dark theme.”

Apart from the changes in name, description, and location, the feature itself is unchanged from when I spotted it last year. Still, the fact that these changes were made at all in Android 16 Beta 1 is noteworthy, as it confirms that Google is still working on the feature. I don’t know when Google will actually launch it, but I’m hoping the company decides to roll it out in the upcoming stable release of Android 16.

Do you love dark mode in Android apps? Are there any apps you’d like to enable this feature for? Let us know in the comments below!