Remember Fuchsia? Google’s second OS project has faded into the background, but a neat project revives the “Armadillo” UI that first brought Fuchsia to public attention.
It’s been around a decade since word of Google’s work on Fuchsia first surfaced and, way back in 2017, we covered an early look at Google’s initial concept for a user interface built on Fuchsia. Known as “Armadillo,” the early UI took a totally different approach, with a quick settings hub at the bottom and recent apps above in reverse chronological order.
Long-time 9to5Google writer Kyle Bradshaw was the one who first publicized that UI, and he covered Fuchsia developments for years. Google, though, never really used this “Armadillo” UI, with Fuchsia eventually just becoming the backbone of Nest Hub smart displays starting in 2021 and this UI concept largely scrapped.
Now, it’s back – sort of.
Ex-Googler James O’ Leary (a lead in Material You) used open source code and the help of AI to recreate Fuchsia’s “Armadillo” UI through a web app. Hosted on GitHub, the web app brings that early concept back to life. You can play around with the bottom hub as well as the recent apps menu, though there’s not much you can actually do with it. It’s also rather buggy, with the mobile UI especially pretty messy compared to the desktop version (below).
Still, it’s a nice throwback to a “what might have been” moment in Google’s history.
More from the Fuchsia archives:
- Fuchsia version 16 rolling out to Nest Hub devices, here’s what’s new (March 2024)
- Google is no longer bringing the full Chrome browser to Fuchsia (January 2024)
- Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia (July 2023)
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