1813771 - "Follow device theme" defaults to dark mode on light mode

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox for Android :: Design System and Theming, defect)

Description

[Christian Sadilek [:csadilek]]

From github: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/25596.

Steps to reproduce

Note: this bug occurs occasionally and difficult to reproduce (only in a handful of small cases). I'll update if there's a standard way to reproduce it.

Expected behaviour

The appearance setting should match the device theme.

Actual behaviour

Still using dark mode on light.

Device name

Samsung Galaxy A73 5G

Android version

Android 12

Firefox release type

Firefox Beta

Firefox version

102.0.0-beta3

Device logs

No response

Additional information

No response

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

Change performed by the Move to Bugzilla add-on.

Comment 1

[Jason Kwok]

The bug actually occurred more offen than it used to. In fact, I can trigger it twice every day when the phone switch between light theme and dark theme. It looks like Fenix gets the previous while resume from background. Because it seems without issue when first switched to the other theme, but will reverts back to the original theme when resumed from background after idle. Here's a video demonstrating the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xScRKpzwfu8

Comment 2

[Lorand Janos]

This issue is still reproducible on the latest Beta 118.0b2 and Nightly (119.0a1 from 2023-08-30) as well as on the latest RC (117.0) builds, using a Redmi 9C NFC (Android 10).

While having the device theme set to dark, setting the light theme on Fenix gets to a darker shade.

Comment 3

[Lorand Janos]

Attachment: Recorder_30082023_122728.mp4

Comment 4

[joakimnilsson]

It'd be nice if this bug could get prioritized, as it makes firefox quite annoying to use for all of us who have scheduled dark mode. I'm experiencing this issue daily on Galaxy S24 Ultra (OneUI 6.1, Android 14), with firefox 125.0b9.

Comment 5

[guaycuru]

Second that. Having to force close / kill Firefox twice a day on Android is quite annoying.

Comment 6

[harrison.bergmann]

Manually toggling my device's dark theme on & off seems to temporarily correct the issue while in Firefox > Settings > Customize, but Firefox reverts back to dark mode after quitting/relaunching the app.

Sometimes after recreating as above, Firefox glitches out and uses some combination of dark + light modes which has the unfortunate side-effect of disappearing certain text in some menus. (screenshot below) This is fixed after quitting/relaunching Firefox yet again, but is still in dark mode when it should be light.

screenshot: imgur.com/bQbOXBe

Google Pixel 6a (Bluejay)
Android v14 (AP1A.240505.004)
Firefox v126.0 (2016019903)

Comment 7

[Andreas Pehrson [:pehrsons]]

I see some variant of this frequently also, on a Galaxy S22 on Android 14. When the system switches (mine is set to do it on sunset/sunrise) Firefox is sometimes stuck in the wrong mode and I do see the same as comment 6 reported:

(In reply to harrison.bergmann from comment #6)

Firefox glitches out and uses some combination of dark + light modes which has the unfortunate side-effect of disappearing certain text in some menus.

Killing and restarting the app makes the issue go away entirely for me, so I saw some improvement in making Firefox's battery setting "Restricted" as opposed to the default "Optimised". Supposedly "Unrestricted" would make it worse.

Amedyne, any chance we can re-evaluate the severity here?

Comment 8

[Amedyne Moya [:amoya]]

:phersons I'm removing the Severity tag for this so that this can be re-triaged and the severity + priority re-evaluated.

Jeff, FYI. We have to re-evaluate the priority for this.

Comment 9

[54ablp35]

I'd like to report I also get a similar issue on a Samsung S24. I turned on system dark mode and then "follow device theme" in Firefox. The toolbar is light. The settings menus are dark with dark text, which is very hard to read. This can be reproduced very consistently.

Comment 10

[Rebeca Tudor]

Triaged this as part of rotational general component triaging. Assigned S3 since a workaround exists.

Comment 11

[Jason Kwok]

(In reply to Rebeca Tudor from comment #10)

Triaged this as part of rotational general component triaging. Assigned S3 since a workaround exists.

Sorry I don't think "restart the app" or "set the theme to light or dark" could be called as "workarounds". I think a valid workaround is this case should be able to maintain "follow system theme" function.

Comment 12

[joakimnilsson]

(In reply to Rebeca Tudor from comment #10)

Triaged this as part of rotational general component triaging. Assigned S3 since a workaround exists.

I concur with Jason, and ask that the severity is reconsidered. The issue here is:

The "follow device theme" setting doesn't work, requiring a force close of firefox each time the device theme changes, which for many people means twice daily.

Having to do a force close of firefox twice daily every day is the problem, not a workaround to the problem.

Comment 13

[yuan]

I would like to add another voice hoping this will get fixed. I'm not sure what triggers it, but the browser will randomly switch to dark mode without warning, even if I'm just switching tabs. This is despite the device never having switched modes.

Comment 14

[Marek Kouřil]

I too hope that this can get fixed soon as it's kind of annoying having to force close Firefox twice a day becasue of this issue.

Comment 15

[major-mayer]

Quite disappointing that such a basic usability issue still persists after being initially reported over 3 years ago on Github.
It is so annoying especially in combination with the darkreader extension.
Please have another look into this issue.

Comment 16

[Jason Kwok]

After doing some investigations, it seems that the issue is caused by Core.getPreferredColorScheme() not getting the correct PreferredColorScheme during BaseBrowserFragment.onResume() call in some circumstances. I'm currently trying to implement a fix, hopefully it will be done soon.

Comment 17

[Jason Kwok]

Attachment: Bug 1813771 - Fixes stale uiMode value during onResume calls in some circumstances r?#android-reviewers

Comment 18

[Jason Kwok]

If you are available, please help testing the fix since it's very difficult, if not impossible to test automatically. The stale uiMode value during onResume() calls, but it'd not occur most of the times. I personally add a Toast inside the if block to ensure that the fix works.