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Make interactives support dark mode across platforms after January 2026 #14749

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Make interactives support dark mode across platforms after January 2026 #14749

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9 changes: 7 additions & 2 deletions dotcom-rendering/src/server/render.article.web.tsx
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -164,7 +164,11 @@ window.twttr = (function(d, s, id) {
}(document, "script", "twitter-wjs"));
</script>`;

const { canonicalUrl } = frontendData;
const { canonicalUrl, webPublicationDate } = frontendData;

// Interactive dark mode support launched with full DCAR on June 25th 2025
const isBeforeInteractiveDarkModeSupportLaunch =
Date.parse(webPublicationDate) < Date.parse('2026-01-08T00:00:00Z');

const pageHtml = htmlPageTemplate({
linkedData,
Expand All @@ -189,7 +193,8 @@ window.twttr = (function(d, s, id) {
hasSurveyAd: !!frontendData.config.hasSurveyAd,
onlyLightColourScheme:
design === ArticleDesign.FullPageInteractive ||
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@SiAdcock SiAdcock Oct 31, 2025

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A quick question(s) for my understanding: are full page interactives not currently built with dark mode support? And is that a current limitation of the platform, or is it just not a design consideration at the moment?

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@frederickobrien frederickobrien Nov 12, 2025 •
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Hey @SiAdcock. Sorry for the slow reply, there's been a back and forth going on about this. Interactive articles are built to support dark mode but at present only on apps. On the web light mode is currently forced (see #11982). This isn't a limitation of the platform - more to reduce complexity in an already complex dev progress. That said, now the DCAR migration is finished interactive articles are rendered in the same way across web and apps, so why not align dark mode expectations too?

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@SiAdcock SiAdcock Nov 18, 2025 •
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Thanks @frederickobrien. Yes, I wonder if aligning light and dark mode support across web and apps might reduce complexity, but I appreciate it's extra work, and dark mode is still in beta, so probably not a priority for teams working on DCAR at the moment.

I've started a doc to track our support of dark mode on the web while it is in beta. Maybe we can add things to it as they come up, so we get a better understanding of the effort it will take to finish this work.

design === ArticleDesign.Interactive,
(design === ArticleDesign.Interactive &&
isBeforeInteractiveDarkModeSupportLaunch),
});

return { html: pageHtml, prefetchScripts };
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