Android Q Beta 1: Pie’s ‘Night Mode’ settings have been removed, but the dark theme is now system-wide

Ben Schoon | Mar 13 2019 - 1:45 pm PT

Now that Android Q is here and we’re digging into Google’s latest and greatest OS, there’s something really strange going on. In a twist, every mention of dark mode has disappeared from Android Q.

A system-wide dark mode was one of the most anticipated features of Android Q, and even something we saw in leaked builds of the operating system over the past couple of months. Leading up to the beta’s release, it was by far one of the most exciting things we wanted to try out.

Now, after digging through every setting we could think of in Q’s first release, there’s not a single mention of dark mode anywhere. Not only is there no system-wide toggle, but even the “Device Theme” and “Night Mode” settings from Android Pie have completely disappeared.

Despite that, however, you can still access dark mode, given a couple conditions. For one, you’ll need to switch to a dark wallpaper. Beyond that, you’ll also have had to turn on Android Pie’s Night Mode and dark device theme options before accepting the OTA to Android Q. It’s very annoying that Q itself seems to ditch all of the settings for now, but the feature is still on its way.

This doesn’t stop apps like Google News or Google Contacts from turning on their dark modes manually, but the feature’s disappearance is very strange indeed. Presumably, Google is ramping up the feature behind the scenes for a future reveal. After all, there are several more Android Q beta releases to go, and any one of them could contain dark mode. As a point of comparison, last year’s first Android P release also lacked the new gesture navigation system, saving it for the second beta release.

https://twitter.com/ow/status/1105935860564967424