Conversations: Dark theme support?

[kr428]

Is there a chance to have a dark theme support in Conversations? I just saw an old pull request over here which apparently never made it into the app.

[github-k8n]

Yes please. It would save a lot of battery on an AMOLED display.
(even if that option is just hidden in the expert options it would be great to have a theme selector, like in K-9 mail)

[iNPUTmice]

I'm afraid the market for this is way too niche since all the 'proper' (google) apps don't have a selectable theme either. A great way to convince me other wise would be to donate to the project and add dark theme as feature wish in the description.

Update: Please do not send donations to the Conversations PayPal account if you want to donate specifically for this issue. I've created a BountySource pledge for this.

[github-k8n]

Is there a possibility to donate via Google Wallet?

On another note: the project description is wrong I think:
it says:
"Conversations is an open source XMPP (formally known as Jabber) client for Android 4.0+ smart phones."
but it should say "(formerly known as Jabber)"

[jkufner]

It is not that simple with Jabber and XMPP. Take a look at http://xmpp.org/about-xmpp/history/. It is more like Jabber is a chat service on top of XMPP protocol. And at http://xmpp.org/about-xmpp/faq/ is very exact description: _It's complicated._

The protocol is standardized as "XMPP", but since there are services not federated with rest of the world which are using XMPP protocol, but are not connected to Jabber servers, I would simply write "XMPP (Jabber)" or "XMPP/Jabber" without any details. Keeping "XMPP" first, because it is the name of the protocol, but not throwing away "Jabber" since it is well established trademark.

[github-k8n]

I was just talking about "formally" vs "formerly" thinking that the first one was a typo...

[iNPUTmice]

Is there a possibility to donate via Google Wallet?

sending/receiving money with google wallet only works in the US afaik and I'm not in the US

[github-k8n]

I'm also not in the US, but i am already using it to buy the humblebundle.. so paying should work, don't know about receiving... maybe you can make it like the MultiLing keyboard, create a donate app for a high price...

[jkufner]

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en

For applications and in-app products that you sell on Google Play, the transaction fee is equivalent to 30% of the price.
You receive 70% of the payment. The remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/113468?hl=en

Before you begin
There is a one time $25 registration fee charged for a Google Play Developer Console account. We charge this fee to encourage higher quality products on Google Play (ie. less products with SPAM).

[jkufner]

Ad donations:

I believe the best option is to use Bitcoin. It is not that hard to buy and transactions are cheap world-wide. You don't have to store Bitcoins, you can convert them back to money as soon as you receive them, but it is better to check current rates, sometimes there are larger fluctuations.

The second best option is probably credit/debit card payments, there is about 1.5% fee to bank and it works world-wide without extra fees. But I'm not sure how complicated is to accept such payments. If you have a friendly e-shop, it might be an easy option.

Bank transfer is probably the worst, in my bank it costs at least 10EUR just to send anything.

[github-k8n]

Bank transfer costs depend on the originating and receiving country. At least within the EU a bank transfer does normally not cost anything but that of course depends on whether INPUTmice is located anywhere in the EU...

[jkufner]

@github-k8n Well... it is not that much about EU as about monetary union and countries using EUR, which is only a half of Europe. Anyway, you are right, it can be nicely cheap or very expensive.

[kr428]

Sent a small donation via PayPal. I am not the biggest fan of these either, but compared to other options at hand it seems the least bad. And I am torn between knowing how complex implementing a custom request can be (as this is my day-to-day business too) and knowing how the app is priced in Play store. Hope others might join in on that. Motivation-wise: Yes I know most of the Google apps now provide no theming choice anymore, neither do things such as Twitter, so it's a tough job picking up-to-date applications that still do so. It's not really about energy-saving in my case (though this is a nice side-effect) but rather about personal and visual preferences and the fact that I very often work in dark environments or at night so very bright themes are generally not much fun and it seems mainstream app developers do not really think at all about this use case. Worked with a friends iPhone a while ago at night - an absolutely horrible experience. So I am happy to at least have the most relevant things (mail, image gallery, calendar, XMPP, Twitter/Friendica) backed by applications that support dark themes... yet on XMPP, so far it's Xabber which still kicks feature-wise but doesn't really seem to be developed anymore and lacks things such as in example image-sending. Hope Conversations might be a permanent replacement anytime soon, see my comment on Play for that too. ;)

[moorchegue]

Is there any progress on this?

[h-2]

I agree, it would really, really nice to have :+1:

[sedrubal]

:+1:

[mhspace]

@iNPUTmice wrote:

I'm afraid the market for this is way too niche since all the 'proper' (google) apps don't have a selectable theme either.

<sarcasm>
I'm afraid the market for Jabber/XMPP is way too niche since there is no google app that works with it.
</sarcasm>
Talking seriously, there are number of reasons to prefer dark theme:

• accessibility / vision diseases. for example, macular degeneration, posterior cataract (well, my case), etc.
• tastes
• preserving batteries on AMOLED
• something that I've missed

Talking about system-wide support for dark theme, there is no problems with that on desktop GNU/Linux and desktop windows.
But on android the only out-of-the-box available option (since lollipop) is 'invert colors' that is similar to OSX/iOS and also is pure bullshit.
Other variants are:

• dark themes for cyanogenmod (Material Dark (CM12+), BlackedOut (CM10/11) etc)
• Use patched for dark theme apps (like ones that this guys make)
• use dark theme that certain developer has built in to his own app (like K-9 Mail), hereof this issue.

A great way to convince me other wise would be to donate to the project and add dark theme as feature wish in the description.

Done.
Also, I hope that things I wrote above are convinced you too.

[moorchegue]

I kinda like this app, but dislike author's attitude about this. Asked donations were given, the whole work was done by other contributor, but then pull request was closed, no progress since then and even no answers.

[iNPUTmice]

the whole work was done by other contributor

that's not true. The PR had issues that were not addressed by the original author.

[iNPUTmice]

Hi,

I also realized that asking for donations is not the right approach. Sorry about that. This is something that should better be handled by bounty source and open this up to third party contributors. I didn't know about bounty source at the time (or at least had not used it).

I will put every Dollar I received from donations mentioning a dark theme into a bounty source pledge for this issue.
It might take some time to double check everything but afair there weren't that many. (I remember too individuals from the top of my head. But I will double and triple check and then create a bounty.)

Update: Bounty created I rounded that up a little to also account for the 2 play store buys that mention a dark theme. I hope that sort of makes up for handling that badly in the past.

[mhspace]

@iNPUTmice , what is bounty source?

I'm not an android developer, but I patch and rebuild Conversations by myself to support dark theme for near every version:

It takes about 20 mins and is not very hard (remember that I'm not an android developer at all).
But to make it production-ready, you need:

• add an option to choose preferred theme
• update icons to support both themes

Am I missed something? Is it too time consuming?

[iNPUTmice]

what is bounty source?

It's crowd funding like kick starter for example but specifically for open source projects and integrated into github. You can reference github issues. And if the github issue gets resolved the one that resolved it gets the 'bounty'.

[tvall43]

I also would love a dark theme. I use this app on my galaxy gear, and its the only app that isn't a dark theme.

[ghost]

@iNPUTmice could you check your paypal account, there should have been a 25EUR donation for this issue

[iNPUTmice]

@krt16s added that to the BountySource Pledge

[Matthias84]

I'm sorry to push this issue again, but I also would love to see that design (esp. at night). So the issue is closed, but without any note, if it will be implemented or not. ~50USD had been collected and also an ressource patch had been suggested.

So are there any plans?

[benediktg]

Wouldn't #1842 resolve this feature request? I'd appreciate it because the screenshots are already looking nice.

[Matthias84]

IMHO Yes

[ghost]

While the dark theme looks great, I'd rather prefer an option for an all-black / night theme, like:

(I just force-rewrite the colors on build, so this is not workign as an PR)

[moshpirit]

Is there any chance to add a night mode? To use the dark them just during a period of time.

[rugk]

So I've created a new issue for that: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues/2111