Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, mentioned last month that the company was working on a true dark mode for the app. Instead of the navy blue that the app has had for a few years now. It now looks like there is an AMOLED-friendly dark mode that is currently being tested, along with a few other features.
These new features come from Matt Navarra, who was head of social media at The Next Web, so he is a pretty trustworthy source. Today, Navarra tweeted out screenshots of all of these features, including dark mode, which appears to be a completely black dark mode. And not a gray or a darker color that other apps are using these days.
Dark mode isn’t the only feature that Twitter is working on, apparently. It is also working on encrypted direct messages. Navarra was able to show this in a screenshot, however, he was not able to show a conversation that was encrypted, due to the fact that very limited people have this feature right now. Given how important encryption is for a lot of people these days, it’s a good thing that Twitter is adding it.
A couple of other features appear to be only for the iPhone right now, which includes an auto dark mode. Where it will switch to dark mode at sunset. This is something that the Android app has had for a few years now. So it’s good to see that Android was ahead on something at least.
It’s worth mentioning that these screenshots are from an iPhone, but there is proof that Twitter is working on these features, as members of the company’s development team have been tweeting out some early prototypes of dark mode – especially after I mentioned to Dorsey that it would be nice for Twitter to have an actual dark mode and not a dark blue mode.
Twitter has hired a number of popular Android and iOS app developers in the past few years, some that were making some really impressive third-party apps. So it’s no surprise that Twitter has done so well with getting new features added to the app in recent years. Making the Twitter app a much more user-friendly app to use. This had to be done though, seeing as Twitter clamped down pretty hard on third-party apps that essentially made the platform as popular as it is today.
Getting a true dark mode on Twitter would be really good for those that have AMOLED smartphones, like the Galaxy Note9, iPhone XS, and the Google Pixel 3. As it is going to conserve battery life. This is because OLED displays light up individual pixels, and a black interface would use less juice than a bright white one, and even a navy blue interface like what we have right now. So it’ll be a win/win for everyone.
There’s no word on when dark mode, or the rest of these features will actually start to roll out on Android or iOS. But it does look like Twitter is almost ready to roll it out.
