Paul Morris·

Facebook App Adds iOS 11 Smart Invert Dark Mode Support

Facebook doesn’t generally go to any great lengths to let users know exactly what has changed in the app, but we’ve managed to ascertain that the latest released version for iOS brings instant support for Apple’s new iOS 11 Smart Invert feature, which is unofficially known as “Dark Mode”.

You may or may not remember that we actually brought you the news of Apple’s dark mode – of sorts – in iOS 11 earlier this month.

Rather than being a simple toggle which turns the UI dark, which is the implementation that a lot of third-party apps adopt – Apple has integrated a similar feature into iOS 11 under the Smart Invert title. This lives within the Accessibility settings of the device and builds on the previous Invert Color option by adding a little bit more intelligence to introduce a more pleasant visual experience.

The result is that users can instantly bring this experience across iOS, but third-party app developers will have to opt-in to support the feature in their app updates. Facebook has clearly seen the importance of this and has acted relatively quickly to support this brand new iOS 11 feature with its latest app update. This means that anyone using iOS 11 on iPhone or iPad, and who accesses Facebook through that device using the native app, can head into Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations  > Smart Invert and turn it on.

When you turn on this feature on iOS and launch the Facebook app now, you will notice that the media (both photos and videos) will appear correctly without any color inversion. Things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be in a dark mode of sorts are still there though, such as inverted emoji characters.

This is because Facebook doesn’t have control over individual elements and is a limitation of Smart Invert by Apple. The rest of the UI works fine though and looks a lot better than what it used to be before this app update.

Let’s hope that Facebook (and other third-party app developers for that matter) adds support for this feature in some of its other apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. We aren’t exactly sure what the roadmap of those app updates looks like, but if support is there for one then we can expect it to come in other apps in due course.

You may also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the Web.