ℹ️ This project is part of a series of experiments to fix fundamentals and improve quality of craft in Windows

Dark mode for copy scenario

Supporting dark mode in copy, move & delete user flows

Introduction

Windows support system-wide dark mode for many years now, still several core surfaces do not adhere to it. In Windows 11, prominent experiences like the copy dialog continue to ship in light theme, creating visible inconsistency in an otherwise polished OS.

This gap became a recurring point of criticism from both Windows enthusiasts and critics, raising questions around attention to craft and overall product quality.

Brief

This project is part of a longer initiative to fix quality of craft in Windows. Here, the ask was to support dark mode in copy dialog.

My role

Explored modernisation approaches that became the basis for costing discussions
Created final design specs & assets to support timely shipping
Convinced stakeholders to increase scope to cover the entire scenario rather than fixed screens

Explorations

In early stages, I proposed modernizing the experience rather than just adding dark mode support.

Another approach was to increase the performance of copy engine itself to support multi-threaded copy. In that case, dialog size could be reduced for small to medium file size.

I also explored replacing the progress bar with games or custom animation to make the waiting less painful :)

While the team bought in to the proposal of modernizing UI, technical framework constraints and tight timelines forced us to limit to dark mode support with existing UI style.

Improvisation

While in this case, the user ask was very specific i.e. bring dark mode to copy dialog, updating that screen alone wouldn't have solved for the issue. There are other screens in copy scenario which also did not support dark mode theming, that would contribute to broken user experience.

I worked to convince the stakeholders to move from screen based project scoping to scenario based with an understanding that when we pick a scenario, we fix it end-to-end for our users.

I presented this approach to everyone in my immediate team all the way up to President of Windows org.

New scope

After relentless convincing the leadership, we finally expanded the scope to cover entire copy flow. Along with that, I was also able to convince the team to cover similar flows (move, delete and restore) therefore covering the entire file transfer flow