UPDATE: Google has now clarified its statement, saying that an official dark mode isn't coming. Instead, it's planning to enable a developer-facing night mode to help devs test apps that use a night mode.
ORIGINAL: As more and more smartphones come to market with OLED displays, many Android owners have been clamoring for Google to add a dark mode to Android. Now it looks like Google is finally going to do just that.
Back in November 2017, someone posted in the Google Issue Tracker asking for Google to add a dark mode to Android 9.0. A Google employee said at the time that they shared that request with the engineering team and that they'd share more info as it became available.
Fast forward to February 2018 and the Googler has marked the issue as fixed and said that a Google engineering team has added a dark mode. "It will be available in a future Android release," the employee added.
There aren't really any other details about Android's dark mode right now, but this is still exciting news. One of the benefits of OLED displays is that you aren't using as much energy to power a black screen compared to an LCD, so a dark mode that has mostly black or dark elements could help conserve energy. Plus, sometimes you just want to have a dark UI rather than a blindingly white one.
It's unclear when Google will officially add dark mode to Android, but it is expected that Android P will be released later this year, so maybe we'll see it then. Will you use Android's dark mode when Google adds it?