Comment by ack_complete
15 days ago
Dark mode for apps is a setting in the OS and a general expectation now, it's suboptimal to ship a new UI that doesn't support it. And, again, Win32 message boxes in your program will switch to dark mode whether you want them to or not.
Win32 controls ignoring system colors goes much farther back than dark mode being introduced in Windows 10. The theming engine that broke a lot of that functionality was introduced in Windows XP. Beyond that, there were always a few hardcoded colors like disabled gray text going back to Windows 95.
Dark mode ignoring Win32 system colors is not incompetence. It was _intentional_. Dark mode was introduced by the UWP side, which intentionally did not extend it to Win32. To this day, there is not even a Win32 API for desktop apps to query whether dark mode is even enabled. The official recommendation is to compute the luminance of the UWP foreground color setting:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/moder...
But they had dark themes for the XP theming engine, e.g. the Zune theme, didn't they? They could make the dark mode switch to a dark theme for XP-style themed controls and configure dark colors for the Win32 system colors.
Yes, and this is also how Windows 10/11 explorer turns some parts of its UI dark like scrollbars. But notably, Microsoft refuses to officially support Explorer's dark control themes or ship a complete dark theme, and because the theming engine only loads themes signed by Microsoft, no one else can ship one either without patching the OS.
Only a very small minority of users actually care about dark mode. It is not a general expectation for software, as loud as those users may be on forums like this one.
And how do you know this? I decided to check myself, looked for dark mode statistics on android, and:
>Dark mode is used by 81.9% of 2,500 Android users on their phones, in apps, and in other situations. 9.9% alternate between the light and dark
So it's the other way around. Only a very small minority of users actually care about light mode.
Mobile is different from desktop. Dark mode became popular with OLED panels because on those it saves battery, and blacks actually look nice, compared to the average LCD. I use dark mode on mobile but light mode on desktop.
I think android is a big difference here. What about excel or Google sheets? Word?
If you're building win32 you're not targeting android.
That survey was power users only: https://www.androidauthority.com/dark-mode-poll-results-1090...
I would be astounded if a majority of general Android users used dark mode, as light mode is the default on most phones (all, IME).
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I'm not sure how much Android use generalizes - I prefer light mode, but I'll use dark mode for the battery savings on portable devices with OLED screens.
On Apple platforms is very uncommon to find apps that only support light mode. The only one on my phone is the app for my old Chinese robot vacuum.
Dark mode ignoring Win32 system colors is not incompetence. It was _intentional_.
Intentional malice, in other words. A stupid attempt at pushing UWP.