Android 12's visual changes are significant, to say the least. As Googlers pointed out repeatedly during the first few I/O 2021 streams, Material You touches almost every part of Android. Yes, even the lowly toast notification. In the new beta, some apps are firing off more informative pop-ups.

The Android 11-style toast we've all come to know.

A toast notification is distinct from the notifications that appear at the top of your phone. A toast is intended to give simple visual feedback about an operation, and then go away. In Android 11, toasts take the form of a plain white popup (see above). Android 12 changes toasts in several ways. First, the color matches your system theme, but this initially appeared in the third developer preview. In the beta, the pop-ups include the icon of the app that produced them (Google calls this attribution). As you can see in the clip below, Android 12 also changes the animation, which is smoother than Android 11.

Currently, the icons are inconsistent—some toasts don't have them, but this is a beta. Having the app's icon in the toast is a nice quality of life improvement. It's not always 100% clear which app fired off a notification, but the icon offers visual confirmation. Google's Dan Sandler offers a brief overview in the "What's new in Android" clip below. Some OEM skins mess around with toasts, but hopefully Google's more informative implementation makes it to everyone's phone... eventually.