IOS – Gmail Doesn’t Respect Dark Mode System Preference on iOS 13

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Given Dark Mode can really enhance battery life, I'm keen to implement it.

Although all my other IOS/IPADOS 13.3 Apps seem to respect the "System Preferences" > "Display & Brightness" > "Appearance" > "Dark", I noticed gMail didn't for some reason.

Google offered this guidance for configuring Dark Mode:

For iOS 13:

  1. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Gmail app
  2. In the top left, tap Menu Menu and then Settings.
  3. Tap Theme.
  4. Choose Light, Dark or System default.

Since the menu item "Theme" was missing in my gMail settings, I gave up trying to configure Dark Mode– wasn't possible to follow the instructions to achieve a correct result.

My gMail settings look as follows:

gMail Settings Dialogue: Dark Mode BROKEN

By chance I noticed my Wife was using Dark Mode in gMail. Given we have the same iPad Pros (2019 12.9"), I decided to try to implement Dark Mode again.

Doing some comparative analysis, I investigated how our iPad configurations varied.

Below are my Wife's gMail settings. When you compare the below graphic of her correct settings with mine in the previous graphic, remark (2) things:

  • There is now a menu item titled "Theme" which is not present in my settings

  • Version Number: Both the Broken AND Working Dark Modes use same gMail version

gMail Settings Dialogue: Dark Mode WORKING

How else did the two iPads vary?

  • My iPad uses both gSuite and a personal gMail accounts

  • My Wife's iPad only has a personal gMail account.

Remarking this difference, I made the following changes to my iPad to mirror the working iPad (my Wife's):

  • Deleted the gSuite gMail account to exclude possibility there was a Domain permissions issue. This did not resolve the broken Dark Mode issue

  • Deleted and reinstalled gMail itself. This too failed to resolve the fault

So both iPad Pro's use the same versions of gMail, but the iPad with working Dark Mode HAS the "Theme" menu in settings, the other with broken Dark Mode does NOT.

Best Answer

The dark mode deployment in Gmail started in September 2019, and as Google states it on the G Suite Updates Blog "To optimize the user experience, we're rolling it out slowly, and will post an update here when that rollout is complete." It is linked to your Gmail account and until Google activates it for you, you won't be able to see it.

I had the same problem and adding my second Gmail account solved it. You should try to temporarily login with your wife's Gmail account on your iPad and activate the Dark Mode.

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