does-not-prefer-color-scheme: dark but gets it anyway

Confession time: I really don’t like dark mode except in my text editor, and even then only if the weather’s not good enough to work outside. I’ve never activated dark mode on my phone but Android turns it on automatically when battery saver is on, which is fair enough.

This has a knock-on effect. Dark mode on the phone means Chrome has dark mode which means any styles inside a prefers-color-scheme:dark media query are activated. So even though I definitely do not prefer a dark color scheme I’m going to get one on Android when the battery falls below a level I feel uncomfortable with.

I assume this also happens where the CSS color-scheme property is supported and has the right combination of light/dark/only as its value, but I might be wrong. I don’t know enough about it yet.

I feel this is a case of us trying to give choice to users and being thwarted by the world’s most popular mobile OS/browser combo. Unintentional seamlessness if you will.