Till now, the launcher in Google Pixel phones automatically turned dark when users had a dark wallpaper on. This is even the current situation. Your theme depends on your wallpaper. So if your wallpaper is dark, so are your folder icons, app drawers and quick setting. Similarly, if your wallpaper is white in colour or has a neutral shade, the launcher your Pixel smartphone will automatically turn white. Much to the frustration of many users, they cannot manually select one among the two themes if they have a preference for it. But it seems like now Google is changing this. This is because someone had added an item in the developer preview in March this year in which they had asked for a toggle to choose the theme. And Google has now marked that particular item as ‘fixed’ in the bug tracker. Google’s reply says, “We have added support for a Dark theme to be applied to quick settings and launcher under Settings -> Display -> Device Theme. It will be available in a future Android build.” So with this, users will be to go to the device’s settings, and make customizations to their launcher settings under Device Theme. In other words, you will be able to select the dark or light launcher based on your preference and you will not have to select a particular wallpaper to enable it. However, if users are expected to enable or customise these settings in Google Pixel phones, then it is definitely a possibility that the default settings will be exactly as they are right now – light launcher with white or neutral wallpapers and dark launcher with dark coloured wallpapers. The report by Android Police says that this change may arrive with the next developer preview, but one can expect it to be live by the time Android 9.0 officially rolls out.
