Microsoft's all-in-one Office app for Android gets the dark mode treatment (yes, in 2021)
"You asked, we listened", claims Microsoft Product Manager Sourab Nagpal in a new blog post touting the addition of Dark Mode support to the official Office app for Android phones.
While that's technically true, what Microsoft conveniently neglects to point out is that the company did the aforementioned listening a long time after the asking began. Granted, the feature has clearly been in the works for a while now, but that doesn't make this awfully tardy rollout any easier to defend.
Not when Android's system-wide dark theme functionality has been around since 2019, when Microsoft itself added the option to apps like Outlook and Bing, followed by OneDrive in early 2020. Early 2020 was also when the unified Microsoft Office app for both Android and iOS saw daylight, and nearly a year and a half later, its users can finally see darkness if they so desire.
And if they're lucky, of course, because as usual, it might take a few extra weeks or so for the freshly introduced Dark Mode option to reach all Android devices worldwide. Once supported, the feature will be automatically enabled if your smartphone is already set to that preference.
Obviously, you'll also be able to manually turn it on and off with ease by tapping your profile icon on the app's Home tab, entering settings, and then selecting Light, Dark, or System Default from the Theme options.
Combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single powerful tool designed to maximize your mobile productivity, the all-in-one Office app may consume a little less battery while looking undeniably cool and mysterious in black.
Curiously (and annoyingly enough), Android Police contributor Prasham Parikh (and a few of the publication's readers) seem to have noticed a bunch of white elements slipping through Microsoft's beta testing cracks, which suggests another app update could well come sooner rather than later.
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