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Gboard rolling out system-matching dark/light keyboard theme to beta users

Google’s Gboard offers the ability for users to set themes as they see fit, but for the longest time, it ignored the system’s dark mode setting. After showing up a few weeks ago, Gboard is now rolling out the “System Auto” theme to users enrolled in beta.

Gboard 9.7, available in beta, seems to have had a server-side change over the past day or two, which is rolling out the “System Auto” theme to users. The optional default theme matches the system’s dark mode setting. When in light mode, the keyboard uses its traditional white coloring. When in dark mode, it swaps to a dark grey color.

There’s no customization available for the colors at play here, but when selecting the option, users can select to enable or disable key borders. Notably, too, changing the theme of Gboard outside of this new “System Auto” option will break the light/dark matching completely.

As far as we can tell, the “Google Sans” font change we spotted in a recent teardown isn’t arriving alongside the new system theme.

For the time being, this rollout seems to only be taking place in beta and, on top of that, may not be available to everyone just yet. Personally, I’m seeing the new theme option on every device currently in use, but Abner Li mentions he’s only seeing it on about a quarter of his devices.

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

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