Why are so many dark modes missing in android and companies refuse to implement them? Are apple paying them off?

[The Torrent]

Tiktok, Snapchat, so many apps with no dark modes when the ios equivalents do have dark mode.

 

is apple paying companies off or something? what the hell?

 

 

[jaslion]

Cost.

 

Apple kinda enforces dark mode. On android its a do whatever you like

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, The Torrent said:

 

is apple paying companies off or something? what the hell?

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

 

it costs money to implement (however little.. i've literally made a dark theme for a ticketing system in 5 minutes before...) so if there is not enough noise about it around the board room table, none of them will even realise it could be implemented as a selling feature.

 

if apple is doing anything at all, they'd be pressing third party app manufacturers to match platform app features, such as dark mode and general look-and-feel.

 

in a certain way, this is one of the few instances where android's more "wild west" attitude is worse than iOS's locked down attitude.

[TrittyTrittyBangBang]

iOS generally has stricter policies on stuff like that, thus forcing companies to conform to the 'Apple' way essentially.

 

[Commodus]

On 1/21/2023 at 8:44 AM, The Torrent said:

Tiktok, Snapchat, so many apps with no dark modes when the ios equivalents do have dark mode.

 

is apple paying companies off or something? what the hell?

Beyond what others have said, it may be a question of overall effort devoted to Android apps. It's not just dark modes — it's things like video quality, camera tools, even where features debut first.

 

To some extent, this stems from the requirements of supporting each platform. On Android, you often need to support dozens of phones even if you're only focused on major devices. That means either extensive testing (not always an option, even at larger developers) or a lowest common denominator approach where features are either cut or scaled back to be sure they run on as many devices as possible. As a theoretical example: let's say dark mode works well on Samsung phones, but mysteriously breaks on a few Motorola models. Does the developer spend the extra time and money tweaking the feature until it runs properly on everything, or axe it? You get the idea. Toss in the variety of development tools available and it may be safer for some to just leave dark mode out.

 

On iPhones, it's much easier as there's only one manufacturer, a much narrower range of hardware and a preferred set of development tools. Implement a dark mode and it will very likely work well with every iPhone that could run the app in the first place.

 

This is part of why an iPhone is my daily driver. Apps tend to either perform their best on iOS or get features there before they do on Android. That's not always true, of course, but it generally holds up.