Google with the launch of Android 10 introduced a highly requested feature - the system-wide dark mode. However, it did skip a major feature in the public release of the operating system, which was available in the early beta builds, that was the ability to schedule dark mode, based on time. Earlier this year, during an AMA it revealed that the schedule dark mode feature was deprecated, as that might affect the user experience negatively. It states that the apps would suddenly restart while they’re in use due to the implementation of this feature. Now in a recent comment on the Google Issue Tracker, the company is hinting that the feature might be making a comeback in Android 11. Apart for the app relaunching, the feature was phased out in AppCompat v1.1.0 because it required apps to request location permissions to be accurate, due to which location needed to be shared at all times. The company stated that even if the device had the correct location the sunrise/sunset time calculations could be buggy. Also Read: Google warns Turkish partners over new Android phones amid dispute During the AMA session, it was pointed out that similar functionality was available for Night Light since Android 7.1 Nougat. To which the company stated that Night Light depends on the CalendarAstronomer from ICU4J, due to which it uses a big chunk of code, which they do not want AppCompat to depend on. If you cannot wait for the release of Android 11 to try out the new feature, there are a number of third party apps that will help you in enabling the feature. However, we do not recommend any of those apps as they require users to run a command via ADB, which might even brick your smartphone.
