Proper dark theme

[felixwiemuth]

Help wanted: This feature can be easily added by someone without knowing much about the app's implementation!

Add a proper dark theme with better colors and which works on all Android versions. In addition it should be able to activate/deactivate it independently of system settings.

Currently the "Force Dark" feature is used on Android 10+, which automatically generates a dark theme. This works fine, but also has some drawbacks (see #5).

To be done:
(Not everything has to be done at once.)

• Use Theme.AppCompat.DayNight.DarkActionBar instead of Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar in styles.xml, which already results in a good dark theme for most parts of the app.
• Define suitable colors for due, scheduled and done reminders to be used in a dark theme.
  • Put those colors in an alternative colors resource file to be used in dark themes: values-night/colors.xml (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/61975773).
• Make the WebViews (About and Help pages) apply a dark theme when enabled (maybe continuing to use the Force Dark feature here is fine).
• Add a setting which lets the user choose between "light", "dark" and "system" theme (the latter applies the light or dark theme depending on whether dark theme is enabled in system settings).
  • Add a settings section "Appearance" at the end, with (for now) the only setting "Theme".
  • The preference could be a dialog preference with radio buttons for the three options "Light", "Dark", "Use system design".
  • The setting should show the current choice in its summary (like for "Default repeat interval").
  • Preferably the design updates directly after choosing (as it does for other apps, like Antenna Pod).
  • Example open source apps which implement the setting this way: K-9 mail (also with summary), Antenna Pod, Syncthing, Nextcloud

[kabuto-mk7]

I attempted to try and fix this solution, but the project uses a very outdated version of gradle that is no longer supported or hosted.

If this project was updated to a later gradle version, specifically a version that uses SpotBugs, more people would be able to contribute.

[felixwiemuth]

Hi @kabuto-mk7, thanks for your interest in contributing. See #27, I am actually currently updating major parts of the project, so it is best to wait with this until after the next release. Always reach out before working on something, see Contributing.

You are very welcome to implement this after the next release. We can talk in more detail about it when we are there.

[kabuto-mk7]

Hi @kabuto-mk7, thanks for your interest in contributing. See #27, I am actually currently updating major parts of the project, so it is best to wait with this until after the next release. Always reach out before working on something, see Contributing.

You are very welcome to implement this after the next release. We can talk in more detail about it when we are there.

Sounds good, I have this project starred and I will definitely look into implementing this, is there an ETA on the next release?

[felixwiemuth]

Nice!

I can't say much about the release date yet, but actually the major updates are already done.
So if you prefer to start soon, I'll try to push the current state soon.

Are you fine with working in Kotlin or do you prefer Java? I could wait with the conversion for the settings activity.

[RajeshPenugonda]

Hi! I am interested to contribute.

[felixwiemuth]

@kabuto-mk7: Do you want to implement this feature? If so, when do you think you could do this? Otherwise maybe @RajeshPenugonda could do this, even though there are also other features that need help!