Android Q beta 5 adds a dark Pixel boot animation to save your eyes when rebooting

Besides the battery life improvement for devices with OLED displays, dark modes also help reduce eye strain at night. We’re slowly seeing more and more Google apps get native dark modes, but a lot of apps with dark themes have yet to update their splash screens to match their new, darker UIs. The worst “splash screen” of all is the Pixel boot animation, which can be blindingly bright at night. In Android Q beta 5, Google is finally addressing the Pixel’s bright white boot animation by adding an AMOLED black boot animation for some Pixels.

If you enable Android Q’s system-wide dark mode toggle, then your Pixel phone should display the new black boot animation on reboot. Otherwise, the standard, bright white boot animation will be shown. This is a very subtle change, but it’s something that has bothered a lot of people who like to turn their phone off overnight. We can confirm the boot animation is black when dark mode is enabled on the unreleased beta build of Pixel 3a, but it only seems to work on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL on the public Android Q beta 5 build.

Thanks to our tipster who wishes to remain anonymous!

This article was updated at 4:52PM EST on 7/10/19 to reflect that the new dark boot animation in the public Q beta 5 only seems to work on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.