Google TV was a significant step up from every other streaming device out there when it first came out. While Google TV’s Android app was a big part of that refresh, it has stuck with the same design for nearly two years. Thankfully, Google is now bringing the app up to speed with its other Google apps with a Material You treatment — but without the most desired feature of Material You (via 9to5Google).
The first thing that draws your attention is the bottom navigation bar. It is now slightly taller, and the tabs are highlighted with pill-shaped icons, just like what you get with the new Play Store design. At the top, the search bar takes up most of the breadth, along with the account switcher shortcut and the cast icon. If you go to other tabs in the app, you won’t find a lot of changes unless you’re comparing it with the older version side by side. For instance, the filter buttons at the top haven't moved but are now shaped like rounded rectangles.
In each pair, First: Old, Second: New
Other than these, the app hasn’t changed at all, except for a slightly lighter shade of grey for the background. Speaking of colors, the Google TV app still doesn’t work with Google’s dynamic theming and uses an off-white shade for various elements irrespective of your wallpaper color. It is a bummer, but hopefully, Google will bring dynamic theming to more apps in the future.
Many of these tweaks have also made it to the tablet version of Google TV, which now has the navigation tabs on the left for a clean look. From the search bar to the virtual remote shortcut, everything else is in a familiar location, similar to what you get on the smartphone app.
All these changes are coming to the Google TV app via a server-side update, so you may need to wait a bit to see the new layout. In our case, the design refresh appeared even on the older versions of the app, so you don’t necessarily need to have the latest update installed.
Last week, Google announced that its TV app is getting a new universal cast feature that lets you cast videos to a connected TV right from the Google TV app with supported streaming services. A slightly tweaked virtual remote design was also showcased, but neither of these features has appeared with this app redesign.