In recent time with the focus on ‘Digital Wellbeing’ there have been numerous ways of reducing eye strain from staring at our phone screens for hours together. There are blue-light filters, which put a warm tinge on the display specially when evening falls and natural daylight fades and we wind down for rest and sleep.

There are ambient displays which adjust to the light in the room to make for better eye comfort. There are also special reading modes on Android phones that grey-scale the screen and reduce glare so the user can focus better. And then there’s Dark Mode.

Dark Mode feature

Both Android and Apple’s devices have included in their recent updates the ability to turn the interface dark with white text. The attempt is to make it a system-wide change which, of course, the user can reverse any time by tapping the shortcut to switch to light mode again. But the problem has been that every app used on the device may not have been built to make the switch between light and dark. This makes for an inconsistent experience and can be quite startling as one navigates from a dark application to one that has full-on white glare.

Gmail is one of the critical apps that users would inevitably need to look at repeatedly which didn’t go dark. Now, it has, starting with Android 10 devices. If you have a recent Pixel phone or one of the new OnePlus phones running Android 10, head to Gmail and see if the feature, being rolled out, has reached your device yet. You can also check by going to the hamburger menu in Gmail and looking for Theme in General Settings where the options are available.