Gmail Material You redesign widely rolling out on Android [Updated]

Abner Li | Sep 16 2021 - 10:07 pm PT

Gmail on the web is set to get a navigation revamp this summer, while the Android app is now beginning to roll out a Material You redesign.

Update 9/16: Gmail’s Material You redesign is widely rolling out this evening with version 2021.08.24.396045863. It’s appearing on the Google Play Store for phones as far back as Android 10, and possibly older.

Be sure to also check out the updated widget. It’s still a straightforward list, but the compose button in the top-right corner is now a standard FAB. It, along with “Inbox”/etc. at the top, follows Dynamic Color theming on Android 12, but is blue on all other releases.

Update 9/5: The Material You redesign of Gmail for Android is rolling out with version 2021.08.24.394054613 — not 2021.08.24.394054657 as was previously widely linked to.

For some reason, this revamp is not enabled with the absolute latest release of Gmail, but the version just before that. In our testing, installing 13 consistently results in the new look. It also works on Android 11 devices we tested, though with blue hues leveraged instead of Dynamic Color.

Original 9/2: It starts on the homescreen, with the top of the page seeing a pill-shaped search field that features a hamburger icon on the left and profile avatar/account switcher at the other end that fits the curvature. The layout of the navigation drawer is unchanged with this revamp, while various buttons in Gmail are now rounded.

At the bottom, we get a taller bottom bar — like we enabled in Google Play — that makes use of a pill-shaped indicator to highlight what tab you’re currently viewing. The selected icon is also filled out, while Gmail leverages a rectangular “Compose” FAB just above it — similar to the one in Google Contacts. That element shrinks to just the icon as you scroll down.

The other big change today is the use of Dynamic Color to hue the background of Gmail for Android. This includes the main email list, all tabs, and the compose screen. The bottom bar, search field, and buttons leverage a darker shade, while the overflow menu also sees some theming.

This update also renames “Rooms” to “Spaces” — as expected — in the bottom bar.

Gmail’s Material You redesign is coming with version 2021.08.24.394054613, as spotted by Artem Russakovskii and XDA this morning. ~~Sideloading does not guarantee you’ll see these changes as there is a server-side component, but you might get lucky.~~

That new release is rolling out via the Play Store, but it’s not yet available for all users.