System-wide Dark Theme request

Isolated-thinker · 1 Sept 2018, 02:45

Greetings!

Today, I updated my OPO to 16.04 (OTA-4) Stable.
While checking everything out, I saw that there was an option for a color theme in the file manager, and I switched it to the dark theme.
Then, I got to thinking... Why idn't there an option for a system wide dark theme? Is there an option to turn the while backgrounds to dark, and I'm not just finding it?
Is this an idea that may come to light (or dark) in the future?

Thanks for all you guys do!

Stefano · 1 Sept 2018, 05:38

@isolated-thinker I'm with you with this request.

Lakotaubp · 1 Sept 2018, 05:38

@isolated-thinker We have the Q&A today you could repost or just ask again there as well. https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1617/q-a-35-this-saturday-01-09-18-at-19-00-utc/11

flohack · 1 Sept 2018, 20:41

The dark theme is already available to all Apps. But I am not sure we should enforce App developers to react on an external change of the theme with wise decisions for their App.

Making an App that will support both themes mandatory might be too bothering for someone, and then he would not develop his App at all. We can encourage to use the dark theme better, and to tell devs about it, but I would not enforce it as a must-be-supported item.

UKPhil · 2 Sept 2018, 07:05

@Isolated-thinker, I had this thought too when I looked at the file manager with its option to increase and decrease the size of the font. This is something that I have brought up as we need to ensure that people with poor eyesight can also also use the os.
The file manager app does seem to have a number of optionsthat would be good in the whole of the os.
I do agree that we should more encourage developers to devlope the paps rather than get a dark theme. Lets look at getting more paps then go from there.

hummlbach · 16 Sept 2018, 00:01

@flohack i think we don't need to force app developers to support the theme... But should have a global switch (later maybe picker) setting the theme. Since going through all the apps and choosing the desired theme for each seems a bit cumbersome...(?) The apps supporting themeing will care the others don't...
And secondly the keyboard needs to respect themeing somehow to really make sense...

Krille · 16 Sept 2018, 09:21

A global switch would make problems I think. Not all apps are working correctly with dark themes. The developer needs to check everything in the GUI to ensure, that everything is visible. For example in the Qml Component ListItem, the title will be unvisible by default in dark theme. Other issues are possible too, because Qml is very flexibel and allows the developer to change all colors like he want. A forced dark theme on a very customized app design could make an app unusable.

Something like redshift would be much better in my opinion.

hummlbach · 16 Sept 2018, 13:04

Mhmm, maybe I'm bad in explaining... I could blame my bad english skills... I try it once more: I don't said that we necessarily should support theming, but if we do it makes most sense to switch themes in a global manner. That does not imply to force the apps! At least it shouldn't imply that and I cannot believe it does. So lets say you can set a theme in the settings. Think of it as a suggestion. Then the app can, if that has been implemented, look at this setting and use the theme set globally. Nobody would be forced to anything, but nonetheless the user could set the theme globally for all those apps supporting it. Maybe there are better concepts than theming - it wasn't my intention to discuss that...