Gboard for Android is slowly getting M3 Expressive, but the shortcuts page redesign comes at the expense of density.
Previously, the shortcuts page displayed everything as a grid. Each item was placed in a rectangular card that you could adjust to fit in one view without scrolling.
The Material 3 Expressive redesign places everything in a rounded pill, with two shortcuts per row. Instead of scrolling, you swipe left to see the next page of shortcuts. The icons are unchanged, with the text labels significantly larger. However, “Share Gboard” might scroll because it does not fit in the container.
Old vs. new
Shortcuts in the suggestions strip drop their container, while the back button is replaced by a close ‘x’ in the top-left corner.
Tap the pencil icon to make edits with M3 Expressive containers leveraged on the “Hold and drag to customize” page.
Gboard in recent weeks has also tested a redesign of the Settings page. This is a straightforward modernization that uses containers to group related preferences.
The Gboard Settings redesign is seeing wider availability, but the shortcuts page just appeared on one of our devices today with version 16.5.2.x.
More on Gboard:
- Gboard rolls out ‘Flick keys to enter symbols’ shortcut on Android
- Gboard now lets you hide the period and comma keys
- Gboard rolls out its own keyboard ‘Font size’ setting [U]
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