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Google has officially announced that the Google Voice app is beginning to get a dark theme option. The new theme’s look is pretty consistent with other dark mode offerings that the company has made thus far, and turns all the app’s backgrounds an eye-pleasing and AMOLED-friendly dark gray, while enhancing the contrast of text to make things easier to read.
The new option is on an extended rollout, and may take up to 15 days to hit all users. Paid G Suite users will almost certainly get the new theme before consumers, of course.
Fans of dark mode in other apps will already know what to expect, and will likely not have to toy with their settings to get Google Voice to make the jump.
The dark theme will be applied automatically if you’ve already got a systemwide dark theme active, and on Pixel devices, will activate automatically when Battery Saver mode is turned on.
If you don’t have systemwide dark mode applied already, you can go into the app’s Settings menu, then Display Options, and finally Theme to select dark mode.
Google did not make any official statement on how compatible this new option may be with other dark theme options out there, such as the theming tools that come with Samsung phones or those that can be used on rooted devices with custom ROMs.
As such, it may be prudent to disable such tools or set them to their default themes before enabling the dark theme in Google Voice.
Google Voice has largely fallen by the wayside in the consumer space in recent years due to relatively low user count in larger markets, but still has a large following in the enterprise world.
The fact that it’s found new life as part of the G Suite enterprise package is, honestly, likely a big part of why Google put it so high on the priority list for getting a system-agnostic dark theme.
This, of course, is not the first time that an app has gotten an update for G Suite that was mirrored in the consumer release.
In many cases, though, the release is not simultaneous; the enterprise crowd will get the feature first and serve as a test crowd of sorts, then the consumer version of the app will get the same feature, perhaps watered down or with a few changes. In some extreme cases, such as Hangouts, the app may even end up having an identity crisis and splitting up the consumer and G Suite versions entirely.
For those who may not be familiar with it, Google Voice is a VOIP calling service offered by Google. It comes with a burner phone number, and allows you to send and receive calls, texts, and MMS messages from any device with a data connection.
You can also use it to forward calls and texts to and from your personal phone number. There are a number of connection packages available at various price points, and for enterprise users, there are a few extra goodies in the G Suite version.
