Google may bring back Night Mode to Nexus devices in upcoming Android Nougat 7.1 update

Google Nexus 6P and 5X users can rejoice as the company may be bringing the “Night Mode” back to Nexus devices. Google has a strange love-hate relationship with the feature despite users demanding the feature since Android Lollipop. Google Play store has several apps developed by independent app developers to enable the functionality since Android Kitkat. Google teasted the feature in beta version for Android Marshmallow but the feature did not make to the final release.

This feature is useful for users who use their smartphones at night for instance for reading books for extended period of time. The feature changes the colours rendered on the display by making the temperature warmer and removing the blue light. This is in addition to converting all the white-coloured user interface to black to decrease unnecessary white light.

The company again teased the feature in the beta version for Android Nougat 7.0 but it did not make to the final build. However, this time it seems that the feature can finally make it to the final build, as the company just marked the issue on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) - Issue tracker as closed .

The issue “Bring back Night Mode” is marked as “FutureRelease” which could mean that the company may be bringing in the future updates of Android, possibly the next Android 7.1 Developer preview as reported by AndroidCentral . We can only hope that the company will not remove it from the final build of Android Nougat 7.1.

One thing to note is that Google Pixel and Pixel XL already run on Android 7.1, which means that the feature will make way to older smartphones. This is a rollback from the statement made by Ian Lake in October that the “Night Light” feature uses new hardware composer interface instead of a GL Shader. He further outlined that there was no driver support available for the feature to be implemented in Nexus devices. This roll back is a good news as people no longer need to root their devices to gain such basic functionality and there is no need to purchase new hardware.