Material Design

After A/B testing for the past few weeks, Twitter has officially announced the redesign of its Android app. Version 6.0 does not add any new functionality, but offers a much cleaner and better organized Twitter experience that more closely follows the Material Design guidelines.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Created by a single developer, Weather Timeline is one of the best examples of Material Design on Android. Packing the same attention to design, Sam Ruston’s next app is a highly customizable Twitter client. Everything from the look of Flamingo to how the interface functions can be personalized to your liking…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Back at 2014’s I/O, Google unveiled a new all-encompassing design language called Material Design, aimed at drastically reshaping the look of everything Google.

While its first implementations were seen — understandably — on Android, it took a little longer for the transition to take place on the web; we are now seeing Chrome being reworked under Material’s principles, and it now appears that the company’s stronghold, Search, may be on the verge of its long overdue redesign …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The last major update to Google Keep in April added a Chrome extension to easily save and add notes to links. An update today adds link previews, duplication prevention, and autocomplete when adding list items. The Keep site is also getting a significant refresh that matches Google’s other web apps.

Expand
Expanding
Close

A major update to Skype last year introduced a Material redesign for phones and made the app feel more native to Android. Rolling out now, version 7.0 brings Material Design to Android tablets with a redesigned interface for devices with larger screens. Besides a FAB, the update also brings a multi-pane view, powerful search, and more to what’s usually an under developed area on Android.

Expand
Expanding
Close

At an I/O session this evening, the inaugural winners of the Google Play Awards were announced. With 10 categories, winners were selected by the Google Play team based on launching or having a major update in the past 12 months, app quality, and innovation.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories: The best Android phones you can buy (May 2016 edition), we go hands-on with CyanogenMod on the Honor 5X, the latest Android phone leaks, and we show you how to enable YouTube’s new Material reDesign on the web.

Head below for all of the handy links to this week’s most shared stories and videos.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Twitter has been A/B testing a re-designed Android app for nearly a month with a launch likely coming soon as more people are seeing it. In the mean time, Twitter has completely overhauled its mobile site with a new design that matches the Android revamp.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Most, if not all, of Google’s Android apps have received a Material redesign. With the Chrome OS update rolling out, YouTube on the web is the next and one of the last major products to get Material Design. Google appears to be A/B testing (via Android Police) the update with a small set of users, but it is quite easy for anyone to enable. Here’s how to do it…

Expand
Expanding
Close

While Chrome 50 started rolling out to the desktop browser last week, there had been no word about the expected Material Design refresh. Now, as detailed by a Google designer, Chrome OS will be the first to get the design revamp.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In a sea of powerful, feature-packed, and well supported third party clients, the official Twitter app has generally never stood out as a particularly good choice for enjoying the social network’s experience.

One of the main gripes some users have had over the years is in regards to design; given the service’s popularity, it was odd to see its stock Android app maintain a fairly anonymous — and not particularly brilliant — UI, markedly in dissonance with the platform’s guidelines. However, the San Francisco-based company may have been hard at work to fix that…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Chrome 49 was released earlier this month to browsers and Android. It added many new APIs and under-the-hood changes for developers, but was mostly lacking new user features. Version 49 for Chrome OS, on the other hand, introduces a Material Design audio player and provides an updated look at what the Material redesign of the browser will look like.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Both Google+ and Google Photos have been updated with a bottom bar in the past few months. Google is now officially embracing bottom navigation with an update to the Material Design spec.

Expand
Expanding
Close

After many months of A/B testing, Facebook is finally releasing an update for Messenger featuring Material Design to all users today. The final version that is coming out to phones today features a blue top bar and a floating action button, along with other visual tweaks.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Last month, a screenshot from Google revealed that the Android N Settings app will feature a hamburger menu and now, new mockups from Android Police detail the refreshed Settings app and point to slight visual redesigns in the next version of Android.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Android version of popular password manager 1Password has received a big update to version 6. In addition to a full Material redesign, the app now has support for Marshmallow’s fingerprint unlocking. The app made by AgileBits is free to download and premium features are accessible via a one-time in-app purchase.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Material Design has undoubtedly been Google’s most significant effort in showing its renewed commitment towards design.
Despite being born on (and around) the web, however, it took almost a year and a half for Google to finally start updating its beloved Chrome browser to the new language.

As first spotted by The Next Web, a few screenshots posted within a recently-filed Google Code request show that the yet to be released version 50 of Chrome OS is being tweaked to reflect the changes, taking a few steps further from what we saw with v48…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Facebook is testing a minor Material Design-inspired refresh for its messaging app, Messenger. The addition of the floating action button (FAB) is the biggest and most notable change, but there are some other minor design tweaks and a new feature that allows multiple user sign-ins.

Expand
Expanding
Close