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The Google Play Store dons a modern look with a new card-style context menu
Bottom sheets look sharp now
The Google Play Store is the default App Store on most OEM Android ROMs, including stock Android running on the company’s Pixel phones. However, it doesn’t usually abide by the latest Material You design guidelines. Although most Google Workspace apps are quick to adapt, the Play Store rarely features the latest design elements. Now, we’re seeing the Play Store app on Android adopt a new design for bottom sheets, hot on Google Maps’ heels, which picked up this change earlier this month.
Google finally updates Material Design 3 progress bars and sliders
The new designs are already showing up in a few Google apps
After years of updates focused on core functionality, Android 12 was the first update to bring major visual changes in recent years. It introduced us to Google’s new Material Design principles and dynamic theming where UI elements in apps and the Android system borrowed colors from the active wallpaper. Subsequent updates have polished the appearance to perfection, and we are still seeing small changes and updates along the sidelines. Google’s latest tweak revolves around progress bars and sliders.
WhatsApp's revamped UI is reaching a few lucky beta testers
A comprehensive redesign of the user interface is in the cards
Meta has spent the better part of this year adding new features to WhatsApp, so the messaging app stays abreast with the other top chat apps on Android. The UI has also changed significantly to make room for the new features. Now, Meta is finally giving the interface a much-needed overhaul, so every feature feels like a natural fit instead of an add-on. This UI has begun showing up for a few beta testers.
Google Chrome Web Store gets its long-overdue Material You makeover
But there's more to the changes than meets the eye
A one of the best web browsers across operating systems, Google Chrome has a responsibility of giving its users the latest features, while the UI stays in sync with Google’s brand image and values. The company announced a transformative new UI design philosophy called Material You, with Android 12 a few years ago. The design guidelines, immediately identifiable by dynamic theming support, were quickly implemented across core Google apps and third–party apps on Android. Eventually, the design permeated auxiliary Google-owned services like Workspace utilities and their web apps. It’s now the Chrome Web Store’s turn for a makeover, right on time for the browser’s birthday celebrations.
Android 14 Beta 3 officially switches to Material Design 3 toggles
A slight change making Android 14 look more cohesive
Android 12 was a significant visual overhaul for our favorite mobile OS, with Material You dynamic theming being the most noteworthy inclusion. Android 13 made it even better, because many apps caught on to the dynamic theming trend, helping the Android system unify around a singular design identity. Material You principles have also evolved in the last few years, and the latest Android 14 beta is the first to feature Material Design 3 (MD3) switches all around.
Android owners on 24-hour time have a new, easier way to set times for appointments
Military time has its pros, but Android has always had a con to the experience
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As someone who was born and raised in the good ol' United States of America, I love using 24-hour time. It's a long story, but to the point of the one at hand, I find it slightly upsetting that many an Android phone won't display the AM or PM signifier unless you dig in a bit — that kind of fussiness defeats the whole point of glanceable information you can get from, say, a good smart clock. In any case, for the longest time, 24-hour clock users on Android have had to deal with a somewhat inconvenient interface in setting times for calendar events, appointments, and such. But thanks to some work from Google's Material Design researchers, that interface is due a makeover.
Google opens the door for devs to start making their own Material You apps
Detailed documentation for the design language is now available
You've heard plenty already about Material You, the new super-personalized look Google's introducing with Android 12. It's quickly emerged as the main protagonist in the story of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro (and it's now available on older Pixels too), and plenty of Google apps have received their respective Material You redesigns. For the moment, though, that's largely where the story ends, as third-party apps haven't gone full Material You just yet — aside from a handful adding dynamic wallpaper theming. That should be about to change, as Google has officially released documentation developers can start using to implement Material You in their apps.
Chrome is getting a fresh Material makeover for its system pages
Settings, bookmarks, history, extensions, and downloads ditch the blue for an all-white aesthetic
It's been a few years now since Google gave Chrome one of its biggest makeovers to date — a perfect treat (for most) to celebrate the browser's first decade. Its Material makeover ditched the trapezoidal shapes and drab gray for a modern, rounded look that's more in line with Google's updated design system. However, the lack of theming in Chrome's system pages (settings and bookmarks, for example) is a testament to the absence of consistency in Google's implementation of Material Design. But with an upcoming change, it seems like the company finally wants to apply its attractive design language to Chrome in a consistent manner.
Chrome gets even more colorful with its big Material You revamp
A recent Canary update for Chrome on Android adds dynamic color theming everywhere
Google announced Material You at this year's I/O conference, and this post-Material Design chapter looks like it's arguably the company's most ambitious move yet. Material You is all about embracing emotion and expression, using humanistic principles like soft shapes and dynamic color theming that adapt to your wallpaper. We've seen Google's radical new design language trickle down to its apps over the last few months — one of them is Chrome, which saw a sprinkle of color extraction when we covered it last month. Now it looks like Google is going all in with Chrome's Material You makeover.
Get a glimpse of Chrome's Material You theme on Android 12
The latest Chrome Canary release is prepping rudimentary support for Monet theming
Google has introduced a new take on Material Design during Google I/O this year, Material You. Its highlighting characteristic is its wallpaper-based dynamic colors, making for beautifully composed interfaces. So far, only a handful of apps have been updated to support these themes, but it looks like Google is hard at work updating its first-party applications to take advantage of the new theming mechanisms. Among them is Chrome, which has just received the first few wallpaper-based elements in the latest under-development version, Chrome Canary v93.
Chrome for Android is getting a Material You tweak — here's how to enable it
Subtle UI tweaks that make the experience more consistent
Google unveiled a brand new design language for Android 12 last week at this year's I/O conference. It's dubbed Material You, and it employs humanistic principles like pastel color palettes and creative shapes. Google intends to apply its playful design everywhere by next year, and we hope that the transition won't be rough. It looks like the company wants to start off strong, as evidence suggests that Chrome for Android may be in line to get a Material You makeover.
Everything you need to know about Android 12's big Material You redesign
The biggest shakeup to Google's design language in years
Google unveiled Material Design at I/O back in 2014. An overarching design system was much-needed — it brought consistency to Google's digital products and allowed developers to easily build apps that looked at home on Android and the web. It has evolved a great deal over the years, but the next major iteration is upon us and it's going to be the biggest overhaul since it launched. Material You, as the name suggests, is all about personalization, and it's coming first to Google Pixels with Android 12 later this year.
Welcome to the first beta of Android 12! Your official greeting is a big ol' digital clock, front and center on your Pixel's lock screen.
Android 12's radical new design, Wear OS brought back from the dead, and more: Every big Google I/O announcement
Here's all the important stuff, and there's A LOT this year
Google I/O day one is just about a wrap, and with it came an absolute tsunami of news. Android is getting its biggest design overhaul in half a decade. Wear OS is being completely pivoted — and merging with Samsung Tizen?! Android Automotive is headed to more cars, and as usual, Google announced a smorgasbord of app updates and changes to apps you use every day. We've got all the big news here, and there's a lot of it, so let's buckle down and get through this stuff!
Your Chromebook's login screen is getting a Material Design tweak
The login screen gets subtle visual changes in the Beta channel
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It's been a couple of years since the Chrome OS UI got any considerable design updates, some of which were polarizing changes that stirred controversy in the Chromebook community. Google has since been steadily updating its core apps and system UI to a more modern Material Design style, including the new Media app and tablet mode experience that rolled out in the Chrome OS Stable channel this year. If there's one component that still feels out of place, it's the login and lock screen—more specifically, the password field. That's changing soon, though, as Google is experimenting with a refreshed text field to make it look more consistent with other system UI elements.
Last year, Google resuscitated its Material Design blog, and the revival was met with a flurry of new posts. The site covers subjects like color, typography, shape, and transitions—all in the Google-y Material style. The blog's latest entry is particularly interesting, revealing an experiment that makes it easy to apply Material Design to a WordPress site.
Google resuscitates its Material Design blog to let you know why your app's ugly and annoying to use
Edited by a familiar face
Fans of Google's so-called Material Design should take note of today's news. AP alum Liam Spradlin is resuscitating Google's Material blog as its new Editor. Today alone, eight new posts were published (more than went up in the last two years), covering subjects from color and typography to shape and transitions, written in terms both developers and design enthusiasts can appreciate and use — ideally, to help make better apps.
Google Groups on mobile gets its long-overdue Material Design refresh
It doesn’t look like it’s straight out of 2005 anymore
For almost as long as we can remember, Google Groups has paid almost zero attention to its interface. Things turned around for the desktop version of the service back in March when it got its first design refresh in years, but the mobile site was still left stuck with an even older and more dated UI. That’s going to change pretty soon, as the company has announced a Material Design treatment for Google Groups in mobile browsers, bringing it on par with many of its mainstream web apps.
Google Drive’s built-in document scanner gets a Material Design facelift
The easy-to-use scanner just got better
While there are a ton of apps that let you make a nice clean PDF file from your physical documents, or save a digital copy of your receipts, why dig through third-party apps when there's a scanner built right into Drive? For one, the Google app comes pre-installed in nearly all Android phones, so you don’t need to download anything extra, and it’s a one-stop solution to scan and directly upload the file to Drive. Following the Drive app's Material makeover, Google is now introducing a similar iconography for its scanning interface.
Google Groups will receive a fresh Material look later this year
The update is only available as a beta for G Suite for now
It seems like barely anyone still talks about Google Groups, but with the company's social network shuttered, it's the only way developers can privately test new Android apps. The service is generally often utilized by coders as an alternative to Slack. However, Groups' design can't compare to its competitors or even Google's other web services anymore, which is probably why the company has decided to start testing an interface revamp as part of a limited beta, slated to be fully deployed later this year.