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App fails to follow system theme and falls back to light theme

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#300 6 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
58/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
android, kotlin
Domain
mobile

Research direction

Reproduce the launch sequence on Android 15 with the system theme set to Dark and the app theme set to System. Start by tracing the mobile app's theme initialization and the status/navigation bar and sidebar handling; done means the app remains in dark mode without reverting or flickering, while desktop and web behavior remains unchanged.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Environment

App version: 0.14.2b4
OS: Android 15, Realme UI
In-app theme: System
System theme: Dark

Description

My device's system theme is set to Dark, and all other apps respect this mode correctly. In the ActivityWatch settings, I have selected "System" as the color theme.

However, when opening the app, the status bar, navigation bar, and the sidebar menu (if I manage to open it quickly) initially display in the dark theme for a couple of seconds, but then the app unexpectedly falls back to the light theme.

Additionally, I have verified that on desktop, the app correctly follows the browser theme (when opened in a browser) or the system theme (when using the aw-tauri GUI). I am opening this issue here specifically because the desktop/web versions handle theming correctly.

Steps to Reproduce
  1. Set the device's system theme to Dark.
  2. Ensure the in-app color theme is set to "System".
  3. Open the mobile app.
  4. Observe the status bar, navigation bar, and sidebar menu upon opening the app.
Expected Behavior

The app should consistently remain in the dark theme, matching the system settings without flickering or reverting.

Actual Behavior

The UI elements (status bar, navigation bar, sidebar) render in the dark theme for a few seconds upon launch, but then the app falls back to the light theme.

Dominant language
Kotlin
Stars
275
Forks
60
Avg merge
20h 32m
Merged PRs (30d)
38

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