Material Gallery Android app to be ‘decommissioned’ in favor of web app

Kyle Bradshaw | Apr 7 2021 - 2:27 pm PT

Google is set to ~~kill~~ “decommission” their Material Gallery app on Android, pushing designers to the web app.

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

Material Gallery ‘decommissioned’

By Google’s own description, the Material Gallery app is “a collaborative tool for uploading design work, getting feedback, and tracking revisions,” launched in 2018. Recently, Google changed Material Gallery from using its own infrastructure to using Google Photos, which means your uploaded creations now count against your Google account’s storage quota.

The next change that seems to be coming to Material Gallery is that Google may be shutting down at least the Android app, if not also the iOS app. The latest update — version 1.4.36 rolling out now via the Google Play Store — includes a few different variations on the notice explaining that Material Gallery for Android is shutting down, each with a blank where the shutdown date would go.

The Material Gallery Android app will be decommissioned on %1$s.
See our Help Center for more information.

The Material Gallery Android app will be decommissioned on %1$s.
Help Center for more information, or use Google Takeout to export your data.

In the third message, which will only be shown after the app’s “decommissioning” deadline, it’s revealed that the web app for Material Gallery will continue to work as normal. This means only the mobile app will shutting down, not the service itself.

The Material Gallery Android app was decommissioned on %1$s.
See our Help Center for more information, or visit gallery.io to continue using Gallery.

The mentioned Help Center page has not yet been updated with information about the Material Gallery Android app shutting down, but with a bit of digging into the app’s code we’ve found the date that the app will be decommissioned, July 8, 2021. However, until the above notices are live in the app and the proper support pages are in place, we cannot be fully certain that the Material Gallery mobile app is indeed shutting down or when that would happen.

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, which some APK Insight teardowns benefit from.