Skip to main content

Gboard on Android 12 gets circular keypress ‘popups’ as latest Material You addition

So far, Gboard has received a Material You redesign that introduced rounded UI elements and support for Dynamic Color. The latest tweak to conform to Material You sees Gboard get circular key popups. 

Without the “Popup on keypress” setting turned on, Google will simply highlight the character being tapped, make a sound, or vibrate. If the extra visual confirmation is enabled, the letter gets extended with a rectangular box above it. 

For Android 12, the rectangle changes to a circle and better matches the other curved Material You stylings that were recently added. The character being held down no longer disappears, but rather gets hued.

That circular treatment also applies when long-pressing the “comma” key for settings and to enable one-handed mode. The same occurs when holding “period” for more punctuation options. In this rounded panel, move around and note how smooth and fluid the selection animation/indicator — which leverages to Dynamic Color — is. 

This Material You popup is widely rolled out with the latest Gboard beta (version 10.9) today. It joins the recent settings redesign of the “Theme” page, but the broader preferences page overhaul to match the Android 12 Settings app is not yet live. Regardless, Google’s keyboard redesign is nearly complete.

More about Gboard:

Dylan Roussel contributed to this article

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Google — experts who break news about Google and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Google on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Comments

Author

Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

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