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Google widely rolls out Material Theme redesign of Play Store ‘Ratings and reviews’ on Android

For the past several weeks, Google has been testing a Play Store redesign of “Ratings and reviews.” Covering all app, movie, television show, book, and music listings, this revamp leverages the Google Material Theme and is now widely rolled out.

Like Google Maps, the Play Store is often updated one component at a time. The latest is a revamp of the “Ratings and reviews” section in all listings. Appearing below the content description, the first thing users encounter is still the cumulative tally of all reviews.

However, each star rating is no longer color-coded and just themed bars that match the media type you’re currently viewing: dark green for apps/games, red for movies/TV, blue for books, and orange for music. This theme is also present in individual reviews and other parts of the interface.

Instead of “Review highlights” that identifies repeated phrases in reviews, Google Play now lists the “Top positive review” and “Top critical review” with a button to see more of each type.

Presented as Material Theme cards with rounded, faint gray outlines, Google asks whether you consider reviews helpful (Yes or No) at the bottom. The affirmative was previously a thumbs up icon, while “Unhelpful” was housed in the overflow menu.

At the bottom, users can “See all reviews” with new filters at the top of this view. A carousel allows users to sort by All, Positive, Critical, and 1-5 stars. Apps feature a “Most mentioned in reviews” section that is not found with other media types. Users can further filter by “Most relevant” and “Most recent,” as well as “Latest version” and “This device model.”

This design is very clean and does a good job of surfacing various built-in filters. It is one of the better uses of the Google Material Theme to organize information. The new “Ratings and reviews” revamp is widely rolled out with version 13.4.11 of the Google Play Store this week.

Dylan contributed to this article

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com