It was widely expected that Apple would be introducing a Dark Mode in iOS 10. Instead, the company announced the feature for tvOS 10, with no mention of bringing it to iOS thereby disappointing everyone. Now, many developers are reporting that they have found a Dark Mode for many of the system apps in iOS 10 including in Safari, Alarms, and iTunes.
Jailbreak developer Andy Wiik has shared a few images on Twitter that appear to show the Messages application sporting a new dark theme. After spending some time in the initial beta, Andy was able to force the unreleased dark mode theme to run inside of the iOS simulator.
More specifically, while examining the headers in iOS 10, Andy found a reference to CKUIThemeDark inside of ChatKit. He wrote a quick tweak that forced ChatKit to use the dark theme over CKUIThemeLight. Then he loaded it into the simulator, which shows off the new mode.
Right now, it appears unpolished and is only implemented in the Messages app. This does confirm that Apple in fact was (or is) working on a dark mode, however it is uncertain when or if we will see this included as an actual feature.
One possibility is that this dark mode will be reserved for an upcoming iPhone sporting an OLED display. If that is in fact the case, we may see more information this fall with the announcement of the iPhone 7.
It is possible that the feature is still under development and Apple is not sure if they will be able to finish by the time the final release of iOS 10 ships. It is also possible that the company will launch this feature alongside the iPhone 7, though Dark Mode in itself is not a big enough feature that it will be revealed with the iPhone 7.
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