I’ll preface this entire article by stating that I’m not a developer, so my understanding of some of the underlying code and its uses in Android is limited at best. With that being said, on to the good stuff! Hernán Castañón, developer of OmniRom and a contributor to CyanogenMod is, very clearly, a developer. Hernán was digging through the source code for Android 6.0 Marshmallow and found a few things that many have been waiting for: Official Android Multi-Window and dark theme support is apparently hidden in the source code for Android 6.0. Hernán posted his findings to Twitter.
Multiwindow hidden in Android 6.0 source code @Phandroid @MKBHD @AndroidPolice pic.twitter.com/6UJzOnf3SA
— Hernán Castañón (@hernan10alvarez) October 5, 2015
We’ll forgive him for not tagging Techaeris on this first tweet, since he made up for it by including us on his second.
@Phandroid @MKBHD @AndroidPolice @techaeris There’s an option inside Settings for it. Easy to enable on ROMs so. pic.twitter.com/RZJ3dqavIf — Hernán Castañón (@hernan10alvarez) October 5, 2015
While nothing was mentioned of multi-window support as part of the official Android 6.0 announcements, it would make sense that Google might look to introduce this feature in a future version of Android. This is obviously a very popular feature, and to-date only a small selection of Android devices have featured true multi-window support. Baking this directly into Android would be a benefit to many users. Some users were able to turn on this feature as part of the Android M developer preview, and it seems that the code was left in the official release even if not officially supported.
As of this time, as Hernán has mentioned, the feature is easy to turn on for use in custom ROMs, but at the moment does not seem to be active in stock Android itself.
And if multi-window weren’t enough, it seems that the user-favorite “Dark Theme” may have been removed as an official option, but it’s not gone completely.
Dark Theme support is also hidden in the 6.0 source code as Night Mode. @MKBHD @AndroidPolice @Phandroid @techaeris pic.twitter.com/xYeR1PR67c
— Hernán Castañón (@hernan10alvarez) October 5, 2015
Good news for those that prefer not to blast their eyeballs or light an entire darkened room by turning on their phone. If the code exists, ROM developers will surely be able to bring it out and give users what they want, even if Google leaves it out of the official update.
What do you think? Are you excited about multi-window or dark themes coming to custom ROMs or would you prefer for Google to just flip the switches in an official Android update? Let us know in the comments below or on your social network of choice.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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