Google News for Android adds official dark mode in latest update

Ben Schoon | Oct 5 2018 - 6:18 am PT

Google News debuted earlier this year at I/O and it’s still one of the best examples of Google’s Material Theme design language, but like many other Google apps, it’s primarily white. Now, though, a Google News dark mode is available in the latest update.

Slowly but surely, a dark mode has been coming to several Google apps. YouTube recently picked up at an official dark mode on Android and so did Android Messages. Clearly, Google is hearing user cries to bring this functionality to its ecosystem of apps.

Now, it seems Google News is next in line. A Reddit user by the name of David noted in a post and a handful of tweets that a Google News dark mode recently popped up on his Pixel 2 XL. The dark theme doesn’t change anything to the actual design of the app, but the once bright interface is changed to a dark theme that uses a lot of near-black grey tones.

The Google News dark mode apparently has four options in the settings. Always on, automatic, battery saver only, and never. Most of those are pretty self-explanatory, but the “automatic” mode will turn on at night or when battery saver is on. Interestingly, Google does have a message that says “dark theme saves battery,” but it’s unclear why since even on OLED displays this theme wouldn’t have much of an effect.

We’ve been able to confirm that this shows up on version 5.5 of the Google News app for Android. That version hasn’t rolled out widely at the time of writing, but we’ve been able to confirm dark mode’s presence in that version, and from what we can tell, it isn’t a server-side rollout. Keep an eye on the Play Store for the update to go live.