One Google tool that you can count on while traveling is Translate. It’s got by far the widest language support and the translation accuracy is among the best in business. Despite being a pretty darn useful tool, the Translate app for Android hasn’t received the love it deserves, lagging severely behind in design. With a Material You facelift for Translate on the cards, things are seemingly changing for good, and we now have a better look at how the interface will work on the new app.

Noted Android aficionado Mishaal Rahman has shared some insights on certain features of the new Translate app. For starters, the translation history has been moved out of the home screen to make it look less cluttered than before. With the hamburger menu now gone, your history can now be accessed by swiping down from the top, much like what you do on Google Calculator to glance at your previous calculations.

Old vs. new

And the phrasebook section, where you can save translated phrases for future use, now has a dedicated button. The favorite icon in the top left corner takes you to phrasebook, which has also been redesigned to match the app’s overall look.

Old vs. new

The rest of the options you'd usually find in the hamburger menu have been moved over to the profile section. So, if you need anything related to your saved transcripts and downloaded languages, it has to be managed from there.

Google Translate has for years had a hidden feature called Tap to Translate to allow you to translate text in other languages no matter which screen you’re on. The floating window that pops up when you copy any foreign language text has also received the same Material You treatment as everything else in the app.

All of these upgrades sound nice and surely have many of us excited after waiting so long for this facelift. However, these design changes are coming only to Pixel 6 series phones that already received a bunch of cool translate features, leaving out nearly all Android users, at least for now. The new UI won’t even show up on any other Pixel phone running the latest Android and app versions. When — and if — you’re able to grab a Pixel 6 for yourself, you can download Google Translate v6.24 either from the Play Store or APK Mirror.

UPDATE: 2021/10/28 14:45 EST BY AROL WRIGHT

Wider roll-out in version 6.25

9to5Google is now reporting on this Material You rollout, this time, on version 6.25.0.02.404801591. It still seems to be limited to Pixel 6 devices, though. We managed to sideload this specific version on our own Pixel 6 and got to play around with the redesigned Google Translate app.

Close

There doesn't seem to be anything particularly new to this version otherwise. Older Pixels, like the Pixel 5a, don't seem to have it yet, and we didn't have the chance to corroborate this in our testing. It should end up rolling out to everyone, though, as it doesn't make sense that older phones wouldn't get it, especially given that they all have Material You in their own Android 12 firmware, complete with other MY-themed Google apps and services.

You can download version 6.25 from the Google Play Store, or download the APK now. Who knows — maybe you're lucky and you get it working on your older Pixel.