9to5Google Log Out: Google apps that still lack Material You

Abner Li | Apr 11 2023 - 12:30 pm PT

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I/O 2023 will mark two years of Material You. To Google’s great credit, application redesigns quickly rolled out in the fall of 2021. At this point, most apps have been refreshed and 2023 has already a handful of the remaining stragglers catching up: Google Tasks, Find My Device, GPay, and Google Voice.

That said, there are still notable absences:

Google app: The biggest app that has yet to be updated is Search/Discover. A redesign of the bottom bar, account menu, and settings was spotted in late January, but it was later rolled back and lacked Dynamic Color.

Google News: We’ve enabled this redesign, but the company has yet to roll it out. The bottom bar is the big change.

Google Fit: In light of Fitbit (and Health Connect to a certain extent), Google Fit’s future is not clear.

Play Books: From search to the bottom bar and other core navigation, Play Books is looking quite dated these days. That said, it surprisingly has a Material You widget and was updated to support the Android 13 media player.

More broadly, it remains to be seen whether the service will see a big overhaul that drops the “Play” branding, like Play Movies & TV -> Google TV and (to a lesser extent) Play Music to YouTube Music. One challenge here is that “Google Books” is an entirely different service that the company (likely) wants to keep around because of its Search connection.

Play Games: Today, “Google Play Games” refers to the ability to play Android games on PC. Google said early on that it will “have more announcements for the mobile app in the near future.” That would suggest there are plans for the Android app to eventually be modernized. We’re still waiting for that, though the mobile client did get the new logo recently.

Log Out: Before new features, Fitbit needs to modernize and redesign its apps

Note: At this point, there’s nothing to suggest that the main YouTube app, Music, TV, and Studio will move away from YouTube’s established design language.

Other apps:

Google Earth: Wouldn’t make the biggest difference.
Authenticator: Ditto, the latest Material You components would be nice.
Gallery: Along with the other Go apps, it’s unclear what design direction Google will be taking here.
Google Classroom
Jamboard, Google Admin, Cloud Search: Last Workspace apps that have yet to be redesigned.
Google Cloud
Google Analytics
Play Console: Unlikely as Android developers are encouraged to use the web app.
Google Arts & Culture: It did get that new icon.
Action Blocks
CrowdSource
Lookout
Google Health Studies
Blogger
PhotoScan