One of the things I really like about Safaricom’s new music streaming service, Songa, is that the mobile app not only came to our favourite platform first but that it also embraced a dark mode from the start. While most Android users probably never get to see it, Android, as envisioned by Google is very white today. From the quick settings menu to the notifications dropdown to the settings app, to the app drawer. It’s as if Google has been on a mission to remind us to be pure or something of the sort.
As such, there’s never been a better time to have apps that lessen our exposure to the light from our tiny devices’ displays than now. Personally, I find black backgrounds to be much better and calming thanks to the high contrast. It’s why we previously turned to third party apps for our Twitter needs before Twitter adopted the feature and included a toggle in the main app. Unfortunately, most other apps we use daily, like Gmail, YouTube, Maps and others, still don’t have this all-important feature.
For YouTube, that is changing soon.
The iOS app for the video platform is already receiving an update that brings the dark theme while a note from Team YouTube reveals that those of us who by chance, choice or design prefer Google’s mobile platform will be getting it “soon”. How soon is soon? That I don’t know but at least there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks for your interest. It’s not available yet, but Android is coming soon!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 13, 2018
Last year, it emerged that YouTube already had a hidden dark mode on its website that required some little effort from users in order to be accessed and activated (refer: Reddit). Later, when it rolled out the new YouTube, dark mode became universally available with a toggle to turn it on and off within the user area (accessible by clicking on one’s YouTube profile picture).
