Android dark mode follow system returns wrong mode unless killing the app

Question

I'm implementing dynamic dark mode change in the app I'm working on and It's working great for MODE_NIGHT_YES and for MODE_NIGHT_NO but when I'm setting this on MODE_NIGHT_FOLLOW_SYSTEM it does apply the theme but not with the right mode selected by the user in the phone's settings.

I'm setting the theme by calling

fun updateThemeSelection(mode: Int) {
    selectedMode = mode // Saving to shared preference to remember user choice
    setDefaultNightMode(mode)
}

The way we check if the system is set to dark mode or not is with this function (I tried other configurations as well)

fun Configuration.isSystemInDarkMode(): Boolean {
    val defaultNightMode = AppCompatDelegate.getDefaultNightMode()

    if (defaultNightMode == AppCompatDelegate.MODE_NIGHT_YES) return true
    if (defaultNightMode == AppCompatDelegate.MODE_NIGHT_NO) return false

    return (uiMode and Configuration.UI_MODE_NIGHT_MASK) == Configuration.UI_MODE_NIGHT_YES
}

This does work well except for MODE_NIGHT_FOLLOW_SYSTEM that only works after force closing the app in all other cases it returns the last known mode.

The weird thing is that if I set android:configChanges="uiMode" on the activity in the manifest fun onConfigurationChanged(newConfig: Configuration) is being triggered when I toggle the dark mode quick settings but when running isSystemInDarkMode() on the config I receive the last known mode until the app is killed...

I even debugged the bits of uiMode and Configuration.UI_MODE_NIGHT_MASK and they return the last values.

I also tried using setLocalNightMode(int) and applyDayNight() and I received the same result.

I don't think it's a device-specific bug because I run it both on an emulator and on a OnePlus 7 pro, both running android 11.

Answer 1

I had the same problem using appcompat 1.4.1 downgrade the version fixes it, for now, I still need to investigate more why it is happening

const val appcompat = "1.3.1"
const val appcompat = "androidx.appcompat:appcompat:${Versions.appcompat}"

there is a bug for it here https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/188681415