One of the most requested features for WhatsApp is finally and officially rolling out to all users. Users of the messaging app by Facebook will now finally have the option to turn their app to dark mode. Whether it’s to reduce eye strain or to save battery life, you can now go dark whenever you want to. On the testing side of things, WhatsApp seems to be developing a Protect Backup feature which, as its name implies, will help you protect your backed up data.
As with most apps and devices these days, dark mode is the most requested feature. We’ve seen this for WhatsApp in the beta stage and in some leaked images, but now it’s officially out there. They focused on two areas, as per their official blog post. Readability is of course important because a dark mode where you cannot read messages is basically useless. They used colors that are closer to the system defaults of Android.
The other are that WhatsApp focused on is information hierarchy. They used color and design elements to direct users to the most important information that they need to focus on, even if it’s on the dark mode. People prefer their apps and phones to be dark to not just reduce eye strain and save on battery life but also to not be so scandalous when reading in the dark. And so if you read WhatsApp in bed, you can now do so discreetly.
The other thing that WhatsApp seems to be working on, according to WabetaInfo, is something called Protect Backup. Basically, it will let you encrypt your WhatsApp backup hosted on Google Drive with a password. This way no one else will be able to see your content, including WhatsApp itself and even Google. It’s still in the alpha stage of the development process so not much is known yet.
The Dark Mode on WhatsApp is now rolling out to Android 10 users in the system settings. For those on Android Pie, go to the Settings > Chats > Theme and then choose Dark. We’ll bring you more news about Protect Backup as it continues to be tested out.
