Google releases APIs for Day and Night modes

There’s a lot of things to love about Material Design. In addition to being stylishly minimalist, the design language obeys a set of rules that try to mimic “magic paper” in such a way that navigation is intuitive, uncluttered, and natural. However, there is a dark side to Material Design, and by that I mean the light side. Since the style imitates cards and paper, and since paper is by and large white, what we’re left with is a whole lotta bright, glaring emptiness. This isn’t a problem during the day, but in a dim environment, nothing sucks more than swiping to the Google Now home screen and getting your eyeballs scorched out of their sockets.

Fortunately, Google is finally alleviating this problem by introducing APIs that will let developers working with Android 4.0 and forward create different profiles for day and night. This will allow apps to automatically change their style and UI layouts based on the time of day. This is one of those features that makes so much sense that it’s a little bit bewildering that Google didn’t develop it sooner. After all, Pokemon games have been effectively running day and night modes for the last decade and a half.

Day/Night support is just one part of Android Support Library 23.2. Also included is bottomless sheet support. Head over to the official blog post to see the full details, or watch the video above to see grown-up, parallel-universe Malcolm in the Middle explain it all while dressed as a concierge.