Night Mode is a term which over the past few weeks and months has stirred quite the debate among Nexus device owners. This is largely because Google did include a Night Mode feature with Android 7.0 (Nougat) only to then take it away again. The taking away being what has caused much of the debate. Of course, the implementing of Night Mode to begin with, was only part of the developer preview of Android Nougat and as is the case with any feature included in a ‘developer preview’, it was subject to the possibility of being removed before the final release. Which is what happened with Night Mode and Android Nougat.
Either way and in spite of some apps looking for ways to circumvent its absence, Google did remove Night Mode and it has remained gone. That said, an issue had been filed with the Android Open Source Project Issue Tracker entitled ‘Bring back Night Mode’. While this is not wholly interesting in itself, as it is probably not the first of its kind to be filed here on in other forums (and considering the issue was filed back on October 20), what is interesting – is that the status of the issue is now listed as “FutureRelease”.
Now on the face of it, this would led many to assume that Google is marketing this as a feature which will come in a ‘future release’ and that assumption would be a fair one to make. However, there are no firm confirmations on this and therefore, it is unclear as to what exactly that status refers to. Maybe Google is just considering the possibility that it might return and has no immediate plans to reintroduce the feature. Likewise, the labeling could be a way of filing the issue on their end – as the feature had been implemented and removed and is not strictly a bug or something that is meant to be listed on the issue tracker. All that aside though, it does at least raise the possibility that Night Mode will indeed return. Of course, if you are the owner of a Google Pixel or Pixel XL, then this is unlikely to really matter to you as your devices do come with Night Mode, albeit in the form of Night Light. While technically a different feature, the results are largely the same.