Google Translate for iPhone gets Material You redesign, Lock Screen widgets

Abner Li | Mar 22 2023 - 1:36 pm PT

Material You redesign of Google Translate

Following last month’s announcement, Google Translate for iPhone has received a Material You redesign.

Update 3/22: Google made the redesign official with version 7.1 of Translate today. This update brings Material You to the iPad, and introduces five lockscreen widgets on the iPhone:

Lens: Translate with your camera or any image
Translate Text Translate between languages by typing
Dictation: Transcribe using your voice
Conversation: Translate bilingual conversations on the fly
Transcribe: Transcribe and translate long speech in near real-time

Original 3/21: Material You, Google’s latest design language, was announced in 2021 and is widespread on Android, while it’s slowly coming to the web. Availability on iOS is much more limited, with Google Translate being the first app to be fully updated. (The opt-in preview version of Google Home also uses Material You.) It arrived on the Android app in late 2021.

This Google Translate redesign removes the bottom bar navigation for a UI dedicated to input. You can enter text via keyboard (or the pen tool) into a much larger field. Below the language selector is a microphone button flanked by shortcuts for the Conversation and Camera, which launches Google Lens, modes.

In the top-left corner you can access Saved phrases and transcripts, while tapping your avatar lets you access history. Past translations can also be accessed when the text field is open from the top bar, while the ability to swipe down on the main screen, like on Android, is not found on iOS. Google has also not added the ability to long-press and swipe on languages to quickly switch.

For accents, Google Translate is just using blue rather than wallpaper-based Dynamic Color, which is a core tenet of Material You’s customization focus. Larger touch targets and a lack of shadows/flatness are other aspects of this design language.

Google Translate 7.0 for iPhone rolled out earlier in March via the App Store, with a server-side update in the past few days responsible for this Material You redesign.