It has been a little over a year since Apple first introduced dark mode on iOS with iOS 13. Dark mode is a user interface display setting where the text is white or gray on a dark or black screen (as opposed to the default, which is black text on a white screen).
Snapchat has now followed suit, confirming in a statement to AppleTerminal that it is allowing a “very small percentage” of its users in select markets to test the feature.
You Might Finally Have Dark Mode on Snapchat
Some Snapchat users took to Twitter in mid-January 2021, surprised by the new setting:
Snapchat has dark mode????? pic.twitter.com/1zGRhtgedA
— Dan | ia (@kazum0o) January 14, 2021
Snapchat, unfortunately, did not provide any details regarding which users or markets can test out its new dark mode.
Until its official release, most users will have to navigate the usual white interface. At the time of writing, we do not know when the Snapchat dark mode will be rolled out.
Twitter also saw some disgruntled Snapchat users claiming that they were unable to test out Snapchat’s dark mode even though they had access to the app’s beta version:
No dark mode on the beta version :( pic.twitter.com/VWs0WmSRPB
— itsyaboimaxoo 🇺🇸🇨🇦 (@itsyaboimaxoo) January 21, 2021
Up to this point, Snapchat is one of the most popular messaging apps that has yet to introduce a dark mode. Facebook Messenger added a dark mode as early as March 2019, while WhatsApp rolled dark mode out a year after that.
Snapchat’s Other Recent Updates
If you haven’t been on Snapchat for a while, you’d be surprised to find out that the app has grown to become about a lot more than just sending disappearing messages. It would seem that Snapchat is finally making changes to properly respond to its competitors.
The addition of dark mode comes two months after Snapchat launched Spotlight, a tab within the Snapchat app that allows users to view “most entertaining videos” on the app in a fashion that is quite similar to TikTok.
Even more recently, Snapchat introduced Bitmoji Paint, a new in-app multiplayer game. The game places the Bitmoji avatar of the user on a shared canvas with hundreds of other users, where everyone is to work together on a giant collage.
A Dark Mode for Snapchat Is Long Overdue
It’s quite odd that Snapchat is jumping on the dark mode bandwagon so late. You would think that with how quickly it responded to other features of competing apps that it would have rolled a dark mode out sooner.
At least the wait is over now for a select few, so hopefully that means everyone will be getting dark mode for Snapchat very soon.