Dark themes are growing in popularity with the rise of OLED displays in smartphones, and soon Google will let Pixel Launcher users manually toggle a dark theme on and off.
In Google's Issue Tracker, a user recently complained that they shouldn't have to use a dark wallpaper to get a dark theme on their device. This week a Google employee marked the issue as fixed and gave the following explanation:
"We have added support for a Dark theme to be applied to quick settings and launcher under Settings -> Display -> Device Theme. It will be available in a future Android build."
Google's Pixel Launcher currently sets a light theme if your wallpaper is mostly light or a dark theme if its mostly dark. This theming includes the dark folder icons, black quick settings background, and dark app drawer.
It's understandably frustrating that users have to change their wallpaper to get either a light or dark theme, especially since a phone's wallpaper can be a deeply personal part of customizing your device. It's good to see Google changing this wallpaper requirement and giving Pixel Launcher users more control over how they personalize their device, which is something that Android is known for.
It's unclear when Google might release this Device Theme toggle, but with Android 9.0 coming later this year, it's certainly possible that this theme feature will make it into that release.
