Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference was home to a ton of software-related announcements, but it turns out one of the biggest new features in iOS wasn’t even talked about. That’s right, iOS is finally getting dark mode.
Dark mode has long been requested as a feature of iOS, and while it has come to the Mac, it never officially made it to the iPhone. Sure, you could get it if you jailbroke your device, but those preferring to stay in Apple’s good books have simply had to stick with standard mode.
The new feature was discovered by developers who got their hands on iOS 10 beta 1, and it turns out it’s one of a number of features that Apple didn’t discuss during its keynote. We don’t know all the ins and outs of dark mode just yet, but we do have a few screenshots thanks to Twitter user @Andywiik.
Dark mode is exactly what it sounds like — turn it on and the colors used in the iOS user interface will be much darker than usual, ensuring it’s not as harsh on the eyes, which is particularly helpful for use at night. Sure, Night Shift is a cool feature, but it still uses fairly light colors, which can be frustrating at night.
It’s not yet known when Apple plans to make dark mode available in iOS settings — the feature was only discovered by developers digging through the code of the first iOS beta. It’s possible that Apple won’t enable it at all, but is just keeping it there for later. More likely, however, is that it will appear in the consumer version of iOS once it’s released alongside the iPhone 7 in the fall.
Other cool features that Apple didn’t go into at WWDC include another long-awaited feature — the ability to delete stock apps. Certain stock apps, like Stocks, for example, will finally be deletable, which is handy for those who never use it.
