How to Design An iOS App with Dark Mode Theme?

In today’s growing and fast-paced world, mobile has become part of our life. And, the competition between Android and iOS smartphones is getting tougher day by day.

To stay at the top of the competition, both the platforms keep on updating something or other in their system. Recently, iOS came up with the biggest update which caught the eyes of the customers. They came up with the dark mode theme for the mobiles.

The fact is people are getting more comfortable with the dark mode theme, and due to which many apps are now introducing the dark themes to enhance the user experience.

So, are you curious to know about how to design an app for iOS in dark mode theme? This article will help you with every point that is important for introducing dark mode themes for your iOS app.

Though before going on the main point, let’s first know about the changes that iOS brought in the dark mode theme.

Major Changes by iOS to Design Dark Theme Design

Basically, iOS came up with four crucial changes to introduce a successful dark mode theme.

#1 System Colors

To make users comfortable with the dark mode theme, the iOS team came up with nine predefined colours in the system. Based on the UI interface, users can choose the theme colours.

#2 Vibrancy & Blur Effect

In iOS 13, Apple launched 4 blur and 8 vibrancy effects that directly change the interface style. All these effects are specially launched for the dark mode theme.

#3 Semantic Colors

Apple decided to introduce the semantic colours in the dark as well as light mode to make a balance in the appearance and feel.

#4 SF Symbols

Under the human interference guidelines, Apple came up with more 1500 SF symbols to make work easier for designers as well as developers.

Key Points to Design an App for iOS Dark Mode

To build the best design for your iOS app, follow the below-given points.

Always Make the Distant Surfaces Darker

It is one of the guiding rules followed by designers when building a dark theme based app. Elaborating the rule - if the layer is closer or near to the user, then the surface should become lighter. And, if the layer is far, then the surface should recede back into the background.

Altogether, using the light theme’s primary surface colour and, then invert the same for the dark theme. Later, make this colour light for the closer surface and dark for the far surfaces.

Hold Back From Using Saturated Colors

The fact is saturated colours goes well with the light theme of a mobile, though it will be horrible for the dark mode themes. Therefore, when choosing colours for the dark mode always go for the lighter ones. All you can do here is desaturate the main color to get the best one for your app.

We would suggest you go for the colour range between 200 to 50 to get the perfect colour for the dark mode theme.

Play with the Emotional Aspects of Your Design

So, if you’ve decided to introduce a dark theme for your existing app, then it is good if you could follow the same emotion colours for both themes. Although, it is quite tough to match the emotions for both the themes.

Therefore, never compromise with colours, choose the ones which could attach the user emotionally. The emotions for both themes will differ based on the design and content.

Never Go For Pure Black Color

If you’re just opting for a pure black colour theme, then the user will get bored and may quit your application. Henceforth, never just go for the pure black colour theme. Try to include a few colour variations to make it lucrative and innovative.

It is always suggested to use the dark grey colour as the primary colour of your application. It is a safe colour as it reduces the eye strain which makes the user comfortable with it.

Enable Users To On/Off Dark Mode

Allowing the system to change the dark and light mode automatically is exciting, right? Though, sometimes it could lead to a bad user experience.

So, rather than system let users manually switch on/off the dark mode theme. This will be more exciting for the users and for you too. You don’t need to give complete control of your app to the system. But yes, be careful with the placing of the dark mode changer button.

Never Forget To Test Your Design in Both Themes

Testing is an important part of every development. Hence, never forget to test your design in both dark as well as light themes.

Check out whether the same colours and design match both the themes or not. Give special testing attention to the dark theme mode so that you don’t miss out any important points for the same.

Animations & Illustration Will Work Best With Dark Theme

If you’ve lots of animation in your app, then be careful with choosing colour combinations of the animation. You need to prepare their adoption in the dark theme as well. Same is the case with the illustrations too. For illustration, never miss checking the background colour themes.

So, these are some points to take note of for mobile app design in dark themes. Developing a dark theme for an app is never an easy task, but by hiring a mobile app design company will make things much easier for you. Though, never be in a hurry to hire a company, check out the reviews before getting into the one.

The Ending Thoughts

As we all know that dark themes have become much popular among the users, and they are so much into it. Therefore, it is the right time to build a dark theme app, and attract the users to it. Nevertheless, it is hard to implement and introduce, but it will definitely give you the fruitful results.

We hope this article is helpful to you. Build the best dark mode theme app for your business.