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Google rolling out Play Books dark theme on Android

Following Google Play’s night-friendly appearance more widely rolling out last night, Play Books is gaining a dark theme. It becomes the last modern Android app in the Play family to get the look.

Spotted by Android Police, the Play Books dark theme coincides with version 5.4, which is rolling out now via Google Play. It’s not widely available at this time. There appears to be a server-side component as manually downloading and sideloading will not automatically enable it.

The look itself is quite straightforward and applies to the browsing experience. It sees the Home, Library, and Shop feeds adopt a darker gray background with blue accent colors in the bottom bar and top tabs. The dark theme also applies to the built-in book store.

Play Book’s actual reading interface has long supported themed backgrounds, so the consistency when moving from a book to your library is much appreciated. At this time, there is no manual toggle to enable/disable the Play Books theme. Those that have the night mode today see it respect Android 10’s system-wide setting.

Play Games gained a dark mode late last year, while Play Movies has had a black background for quite some time now. In light of YouTube Music, it’s unlikely that such an appearance is coming to Play Music. For example, the Android client still lacks a bottom bar even though the iOS app has had one for some time now.

More Google dark themes:

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com