AutoDarkMode
UI/UX: Unclear what the Offset settings do
Describe what issue or improvement you have with the usability design
It's not clear what the "Light (minutes)" and "Dark (minutes)" values do in the Time > Offset settings. I opened the settings because I wanted the app to switch to Dark mode some time before sunset. It made sense to me that the Offset settings would provide what I need, but I was confused on how to do it. My best guess was that the numbers meant making the "Light" or "Dark" periods that many minutes longer.
I ended up asking Copilot about this – it explained how the setting works and pointed me to this function in the source code to support what it was saying. This is, in my opinion, too much to ask of a regular user to understand this feature.
Describe how you would like to see it improved
Add an explanation for what the "Light (minutes)" and "Dark (minutes)" values control – they offset the start of the "light" or "dark" period by the set number of minutes. A mention that the numbers can be negative would be nice as well.
I also thought it would be good to replace "Light" and "Dark" in this UI with "Sunrise" and "Sunset", but I understand that might not be accurate when a user has set custom hours for the switching, for instance.
Good point, at least a tooltip could provide more information, namely that Light (minutes) means "shift switch to light theme by x minutes" and Dark (minutes) means "shift switch to dark theme by x minutes")
Question: What is a reasonable maximum value? Currently it's arbitrarily max-ed as ±999 minutes, equals 16 hours and 23 minutes 😆
Question: What is a reasonable maximum value? Currently it's arbitrarily max-ed as ±999 minutes, equals 16 hours and 23 minutes 😆
it has no maximum value by design :D
Good point, at least a tooltip could provide more information, namely that Light (minutes) means "shift switch to light theme by x minutes" and Dark (minutes) means "shift switch to dark theme by x minutes")
Need to note: Should we add tool tip now? I think Jay's added string is a good illustration.
Maybe you're all aware of this but the boxes don't currently support negative values? Does this mean that the offsets currently only shift the transition times forward?
Maybe you're all aware of this but the boxes don't currently support negative values? Does this mean that the offsets currently only shift the transition times forward?
Uh? Even ADM in the current version supports negative values.
Just updated to the latest version. When the "Enable Automatic Theme Switching" is set to "Follow Windows Night Light" only positive values are allowed.
Just updated to the latest version. When the "Enable Automatic Theme Switching" is set to "Follow Windows Night Light" only positive values are allowed.
Sorry, I forgot this. But this is really in the design, but I don't know why. CC @Spiritreader @Armin2208
I thought it was because the app can only listen for, and react to a change event in night light. It has settings for a schedule, but ADM can't read those. Therefore can't predict the next time.
Just updated to the latest version. When the "Enable Automatic Theme Switching" is set to "Follow Windows Night Light" only positive values are allowed.
Sorry, I forgot this. But this is really in the design, but I don't know why. CC @Spiritreader @Armin2208
Yes, what Jay is saying is correct.
Negative values in night light mode are not supported because we are not time travelling wizards (that would be really neat though!).
the app can only listen for, and react to a change event in night light.
To expand on this a bit:
The NightLight registry key is in a proprietary format und you'd need to decode the binary object in order to gain full access to its state. Unless Microsoft changes that or someone reverse engineers it and publishes a (maintained!) nuget package that we could integrate, the way we implement the feature cannot change.
Auto Dark Mode listens to changes of the NightLight registry key when it toggles on or off, as in, it decodes part of the binary format that has remained stable over the years (off and on only) Because this is an event pushed through a RegKey observer, we only know that it is happening, but not when.
@Kiwow (and others) is this issue resolved?
The offset settings have stayed the same since I opened this, so I believe the issue is still relevant.
The parent issue of this one has been marked as a duplicate of #965, which has been closed due to inactivity, but this issue has not been addressed.
Here's the (latest as of now) version I'm on, just in case something has been done in an unreleased version that I'm unaware of.
- Commit:
5922db4 - Service/App:
10.4.2.29 - Updater:
3.1.6 - Shell:
1.3.3.0 - .Net:
8.0.0
Oh yeah we have a release candidate for version 11. You can try it by going to Settings and set Channel to Beta. And then let it update.
I want to keep this issue open, because we can adapt some idead from PowerToys Light Switch in Auto Dark Mode 11.1.
Oh yeah we have a release candidate for version 11. You can try it by going to Settings and set Channel to Beta. And then let it update.
@Jay-o-Way I see, thank you. I finally got around to updating it and the new offset settings seem clear to me. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to address this issue.
I won't close it because of what @Armin2208 said in their last comment but to me, the issue has been resolved.
I want to keep this issue open, because we can adapt some idead from PowerToys Light Switch in Auto Dark Mode 11.1.
Updated Powertoys and got the light-switch module just now; I wonder why they choose to undermine foss projects like ADM and Wox all the time
Updated Powertoys and got the light-switch module just now; I wonder why they choose to undermine foss projects like ADM and Wox all the time
Ah, in fact, LightSwitch is more like a lightweight function, and ADM will provide richer functions, which is far beyond LightSwitch in many aspects. (This is definitely not a preference for ADM, hahaha ( •̀ ω •́ )✧)
The last step to make Offset completely clear, would be to put the diagram that PowerToys has in Auto Dark Mode. I think it looks cool and is very understandable. Just a little bit of improvement: we also need an icon for the light theme area :D