App Dark Theme/Mode

[milehiguy]

@milehiguy

@shumburger

Please add a “night mode” to the app while in portrait mode,

I understand your charging stand issue, but … let’s not encourage the developers to implement any new feature JUST for portrait mode. Many of us have been clamoring to have landscape mode implemented throughout the app on our tablets, in my case an iPad. For me, this is a physical necessity and the single biggest problem with the app.

Having said this, I was surprised (and delighted) when I noticed this App Dark Theme/Mode thread/roadmap item. I have SO much trouble seeing text labels in the new version of the app (thin font, insufficient contrast, etc.). Providing a Dark Theme/Mode for the app, similar to what I’m looking at NOW in the forum, is a wonderful idea

Forgot that I’d written this WAY back in Jan 2019. I’m specifically referring to the Landscape issue. Over 3 years later and here I sit, with the same disability, unable to read the Home (and other) screens without first rotating my iPad 90°. Easy for most humans, but not for me unfortunately. I was led to believe, even a year earlier (Q1 2018), that this would be implemented. Fwiw … I’ve experimented with “Stage Manager” on my iPad, but that doesn’t cut the mustard, as the saying goes. What we need, and what I expected, and still hope for, is true Landscape mode support, throughout the app, like 99% of my other installed apps have. Ah well … I’ll shut up about it for another year or so. Have a pleasant day.

[fresh2infinity]

Thank Goodness for Android and the ability to force orientation but it’s mind boggling that not only is their app not available in dark mode but the fact that basic screen orientation in non existent…don’t be fooled by teasers these could all have been photoshopped to appease us. 0 confidence in the product team behind the app, all they care about is new products and people buy so there’s that…

Google of all people have finally stepped up to he plate to give us a workaround to the awful Wyze app. You can now view live feeds of cameras in the Google home app from a bunch of different camera providers including Wyze along with proper night mode support and of course auto rotation… you’re welcome folks.

[AlleyAL]

Wyze App Dark Mode for the app not videos

Why is there not an option in the iOS Wyze app
to turn on Dark mode? I’m not talking about video settings I’m taking about the White background for the Wyze app it’s hurting my eyes every single day makes me not want use the app I’m literally feeling pain in my eyes everyday because of the white background in the Wyze app. I see you have an option for Dark Mode in the forums but not the iOS Wyze app really please add DARK MODE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. For the Wyze App

[AlleyAL]

What is taking so long to add dark mode are you guys at Wyze that broke? you can’t afford to make the Wyze app background black instead of white if eye! go blind because of the white background , sorry to say I’m suing. Please add this feature. It’s a shame 5 years past since this post & still developers don’t care to make it an option to turn dark mode on for the Wyze app. Pisses me off every day my eyes feel like they begin to burn & melt browsing through the app.

[carverofchoice]

I asked about this in the thread for tomorrows AMA that includes Wyze’s Principle Software Engineer!

Dark Mode specific question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/13bwqw9/comment/jjf180p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
(edit: corrected link the correct question)

General Question about WHY is it hard to implement some of these feature requests in the app:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/13bwqw9/comment/jje2vyg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Will let you know what the App Engineer says on the topic.

[carverofchoice]

There were several Answers that mentioned Dark Mode or were directly related to the App Layout difficulties that caused this to take so long. I’m posting a copy of all those answers here for those who don’t use Reddit but still want to know what Wyze most recently had to say related to this Dark Mode topic as of this week:

@carverofchoice

Question	Reply
Dark mode on Android and iOS	We are working on these features already, initially for the camera live view screens, camera group, and HMS/CPT camera screens. We are aiming for as early as 2.43 but sometimes delays can happen. -u/WyzeMaximK
"App Engineering Question for Maxim Komleu: Wyze users are frequently told about some App wishlist requests that some things we ask for aren’t easy to program/implement due to “the way the app is structured,” and that to implement some of them would require waiting for a whole rewrite of the app from the ground up to implement several of these requests. Can you elaborate for us on what makes this so difficult compared to other apps so that some things just aren’t possible or as easy to do right now as some other people with programming experience have thought it should be? What kind of design debt is causing these limitations? How is it structured differently than you would like?	It is not just engineering question, but also reasonability, marketing, and so on. Sometimes, it is not a problem to implement something, but it conflicts with company projections or conflicts with other features and deadlines for them. As an example, we were receiving a lot of requests for dark mode support. We finally did that, but before the release we needed to work on other more critical problems. - u/WyzeMaximK
“Also along these lines, knowing if there are hurdles from the backend architecture/infrastructure vs the way the Wyze app has been built to manage so many devices over time vs having multiple apps. The only secondary app is the Wyze Car app and that might be because it was originally “just” an April Fools joke product but became real later on after seeing continued interest. Are microservices being used or planned for to improve development processes?”	In terms of back-end technical architecture, we have adopted a technical framework of microservices. However, this will not improve our hardware development speed. But we will try to speed up from the hardware development process. - u/WyzeMJ
“To put some of the other Dark mode comments in the form of an AMA relevant question for you, Cofounder Dave Crosby publicly shared in this Facebook thread 3 months ago that Wyze was working on the design process to convert the Camera UI for all the other cameras to DarkMode now, without having to wait for an entire rewrite of the app. He even showed us a prototype of the progress you have made. Firstly, thank you for working on this! We really appreciate it! Related to the above prototype example, Dave said, There’s a number of surprisingly difficult technical challenges to this, but we’ve started the design process. Still scoping it out. Since this is your field of expertise, can you tell us more about what the technical challenges are to this that he was referring to? He said you have started the design process (again, thank you). Since you are probably the most familiar with what this is going to take to get it done, can you tell us any [non-binding] estimates or hopes on what you are personally thinking of for a rough timeline? We acknowledge things could work out better than you expect, or there could be other weird obstacles that arise, but it would be nice to have some kind of estimate based on how much work you’ve already put in to figure out how easy it would be to finish now. He also said “Still scoping it out,” and I am wondering what that implies. Does that mean that you are unsure IF it can reasonably be done in the current app build, or whether he just mean scoping out in the sense of still unsure HOW LONG it is going to take?”	The problem is that adding theme management into the entire app was not expected at the initial stage of app development. And even when the app was starting development, Apple had not released the functionality yet. It’s always more complicated to update something that is already working. We have to think about the current user experience, keep it untouched, avoid regressions, and place something more on top of the current implementation. But we are working on it. We have a solution for the problem and we’re targeting the 2.43 release. Of course, the initial release will not be able to cover all UX. But it’s a start, and we will continue working to bring a comprehensive user experience. - u/WyzeMaximK
"For both the App and the Firmware teams. In a letter, the Founders said the following: in 2023, because this year, much like our first year in business, will be the year of the CAMERA. With your help, we will revisit everything about the Wyze Cam experience. We will focus hard on hearing all your feedback and making the best camera hardware and software in existence. Product launches in 2023 will also be focused on cameras, with few exceptions. Get ready for some big camera announcements in just a few weeks! And we will of course continue to support and update all Wyze products. With that context in mind, please answer the following: What efforts have you made toward these goals so far this year that most added to that, and what we can expect for the second half of the year? What feedback are you hearing loud and clear from users related to your team’s particular responsibilities or area of influence?	Soon the app teams will be releasing many improvements and fixes to make apps more efficient, We are working on several high demand features (frequently asked by users) which we will try to release this summer and early autumn. The application is the business card of the company, this is the first thing that the user sees and starts using, because of that, the app team was working hard and we still have a lot of work to do to make the app look and operate better, we constantly are researching new features, and improving current functionalities, we are carefully monitoring user feedback to satisfy most of our users. The app is one big system, we can not make something specific working well and forget about rest of the functionalities, e.g. if we do dark mode, we do it across all app, if we do landscape we do for whole app and so on. - u/WyzeMaximK
“Maybe for Maxim or Mingjun. I find that the app layout is still very primitive. I find it hard to use, as someone who has tons of Wyze devices. Why is this not being addressed? (since, like, the start?) It seems like a UX and usability expert can solve this issue. Also, just the frontend in general. Do you not have resources for this? Just asking, from one engineer to another. asking this specifically as this is my field. e.g. why can’t i group doorbells and cameras? or why does the app always requires a cache clean on both app level and device level (because it says offline on thumbnail), or why does it not scale well on bigger devices?”	We are working on the problem and are gradually on improving the usability of the app. We have gathered a lot of user feedback and accumulated tons of data. Currently, we are focusing on Home and Event page layout, especially for adopting landscape layout, and we are also working on dark mode because it is the most requested feature. We are redesigning the UI and this can be found initially on new incoming products and later in the year we will adopt the new UI for older products. - u/WyzeMaximK
“What are the challenges to providing app or firmware fixes for items which seem to be relatively simple? Like allowing the grouping of different devices in a group. Individuals would like to label things as Living Room, Family Room, etc. Why do some of the things like this take so long?”	We are typically pretty quick to fix these simple things in the Beta environment, but “simple” fixes typically create silly bugs, at least from my experience. (See my previous post about the WPA3 breakage!). There are a lot of legacy reasons for our slow cadence in regard to the production firmware… The 10.x release was essentially a complete rewrite of the code, which meant that the tiny fixes that could have been made to 9.x took forever to get into production. This is changing though!! 10.x is out! The weight has been lifted! Our release cadence will not only increase going forward, but also include smaller changes that should cause less breakage - u/WyzeMitchell

If you want to check out the original sources, you can go here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/13bwqw9/reddit_ama_592023/

Jason also posted and update about Dark Mode here in the forums:

@WyzeJasonJ

Now if you have made it this far in the post you deserve something more and I have it. Dark mode is coming, I know you have heard it before and I am constantly reminded that it is needed every time I post an updated app and dark mode is not there. We are getting a lot closer and have some images of where we are internally on this. It has been a long time coming but we are getting close

[kd7cao]

Thank you for the comprehensive update. It is nice to see some official movement. However, I must say a company needs to be thinking of priority that customers want not their internal priorities. If your user base is demanding a feature, eventually “like me” we are going to stop buying new products till we get what “we” the “subscribers” want.

In my humble opinion, Wyze should focus absolute all available power towards the app redesign. As they said it is their business card. It represents the company to everyone no matter what product we own. Top three things I believe should be fixed immediately:

1. Dark Mode (or system theme adoption)
2. Landscape Mode across all environment
3. Get rid of the stupid support icon that has to be moved to use any screen function. It is always in the way.

[dyot13]

Thank you for asking the question you did and for summarizing all the other questions and answers related to dark mode. It is VERY MUCH appreciated!

[Omgitstony]

@kd7cao

Get rid of the stupid support icon that has to be moved to use any screen function. It is always in the way.

You talking about the floating support button on the BETA app? Have you clicked the toggle for showing the “support log button” in Account → App Settings?

[kd7cao]

Yup. That stupid icon. The setting doesn’t stay persistently, it is always popping up even when toggled off.

[Omgitstony]

Ok, so its not that it needs to be removed, its that the current app function to remove it by the users choice doesn’t work all the time.

This sounds like a bug, as opposed to a new function, and i would recommend maybe submitting this for a “Fix it Friday”. Contacting Support may not be the correct avenue for this since it is a beta issue. I would also make a reply to whatever beta app version release post you use stating that the “Submit app button” toggle setting doesn’t persist.

[nyuan]

Hi everyone! This is Nathan from Wyze! We value your opinion! We’re excited to introduce some new features to enhance your camera experiences and event details on our app. One of the key additions is the dark theme and light theme switch, allowing you to personalize your viewing experience. We want to clarify that this is not a comprehensive app-level dark mode due to certain limitations we currently face. However, we still believe this feature will significantly improve your interactions within the camera and event detail pages. We would greatly appreciate your feedback on these new themes to better understand your preferences and ensure we’re meeting your expectations. Please share your thoughts and suggestions with us so that we can continue to refine and enhance your user experience. Thank you!

[peepeep]

Hey Nathan

Great to see the progress coming into view! My concern remains:

@peepeep

I tried forcing dark via the dev option on Android 10. Seemed promising until…

When swiping through a list of Events, when either the “to” or “from” Event is B&W, I get a full frame white flash in transition. It literally hurts.

Between two color Events, not so.

Is this fixed?

[Seapup]

Looks great to me!

I’m already using forced native dark mode under Android at night, but would much prefer dark mode at the Wyze app level:

.
.
.

I think your “View MicroSD Card” and “View Live Stream” buttons could be slightly darker, like this:

[Seapup]

@peepeep

Is this fixed?

It’s not fixed in current beta, but perhaps nyuan can sneak it in to their dark mode build?

[carverofchoice]

For those who don’t have Discord, he posted a video example, but it was too big for the forum to host the video file, so I have converted it to a file size that will work in here and will post it so the rest of you can see it here too. I figured some of you would appreciate being able to view it as well:

[ssummerlin]

Hallelujah!

[peepeep]

Never miss a chance to sneak this in:

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah (Audio)

Notice the dark mode.

[jentax]

Looks good and hopefully ready for deployment soon! I would gladly take a “This feature is in beta status” message or have it be opt-in just to have something in the meantime as opposed to 24/7 light mode.

[kevin.v.morris]

Yeah, I’d gladly take a buggy version instead of searing my retinas every morning…