- Android 16 will introduce an API that alerts apps about the current lighting situation.
- This feature will enhance photo quality in low-light conditions for apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
- The API will detect three different ambient light values, providing more accurate camera settings.
If you ever tried capturing photos at night with Instagram’s camera, you may have noticed they don’t look good and appear darker. That’s because Instagram has no clue about the current lightning situation, and hence takes photos in normal mode. But Android 16 will fix this issue allowing you to take better low-light photos with other apps as well.
According to Mishaal Rahman (via X), Android 16 will introduce Night Mode Indicator API. This will alert other apps about the current lightning situation, so they can kick off their night mode extensions. This is supposed to work with most social and camera apps on supported Android devices.
📸Android 16 will introduce a new Night Mode Indicator API that will let apps know when the device is in a low light environment.
This will let social/camera apps know when they should use the Night Mode Camera Extension available on some devices.
The API will provide 3… pic.twitter.com/mRh8r5A3kP— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) December 17, 2024
He showed a demo of this feature working on the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro, and the Galaxy S24. As you can see, without the API, Instagram captured quite dark photos and poor-quality photos. You can hardly make out the objects in the picture. But with the Night Mode Indicator API, the results are quite close to the clicks from the stock camera app.
This Night Mode API on Android 16 features three different values based on the ambient light situation it detects. Here’s each of them as explained by Mishaal in his post:
- UNKNOWN: The camera is unable to reliably detect the lighting conditions of the current scene to determine if a photo will benefit from a Night Mode Camera Extension capture.
- OFF: The camera has detected lighting conditions that are sufficiently bright. Night Mode Camera Extension is available but may not be able to optimize the camera settings to take a higher-quality photo.
- ON: The camera has detected low-light conditions. It is recommended to use Night Mode Camera Extension to optimize the camera settings to take a high-quality photo in the dark.
Google is now focusing its attempts on more under-the-hood improvements with new Android releases and this is one such example. The new API will go a long way in improving the experience of taking photos on apps like Snapchat and Instagram. But what are your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments below.
