Material You

A small tweak to Gmail for Android yesterday updated the Android notification so it adopts Dynamic Color theming and no longer defaults to a red icon. 

As teased at I/O 2023 last month, Google Weather is getting a Material You redesign, and it’s appearing first on the Pixel Tablet.

As announced at the start of this month, Google News is getting updated Material You widgets that are now rolling out.

Following the announcement earlier this month, Google Keep has rolled out the Single note Wear OS Tile, while making a few other visual tweaks to the Android app.

Google is preparing to launch Wear OS 4 this fall, and one of the most significant additions is Material You, which makes your smartwatch more colorful to match your current watch face.

Following the launch of the Pixel Tablet and Fold, a handful of developer sessions at I/O 2023 were focused on how to optimize apps for large screens. At the end of one particular talk, the Material You team gave “a little preview of what [it has] planned for [its] Google Apps on large screen,” like tablets and foldables, in the future.

As work on Material 3 continues, Google now offers a delightful new carousel component. It might look like the wallpaper shortcut when you long press on the Pixel Launcher, but only the shape is similar there. The full carousel is quite animated.

Android’s Weather experience in 2021 got a Google Material Theme redesign just as Material You was widely rolling out to other first-party apps. Google Weather is now set for a redesign with Material You elements.

Google Design has redone its website, and it is quite fun to explore. To mark the occasion, there is a series of short design films about “The Making of Material You.”

Google News for Android is the latest first-party app to get a Material You redesign, as well as tablet and large screen optimizations.

Google is getting ready to introduce a bolder, even more colorful version of Material You, allowing you to leave the pastel shades behind once and for all.

If what has emerged pans out, Fitbit’s “new app design” is a bit on the minor side and not the Material You revamp we’ve been waiting for. While we wait for that, here’s what the Material You team thinks modern Fitbit widgets would look like.

In recent years, Google has tweaked the menu bar in Docs to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. A prominent search bar is now coming to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Google is in the process of updating the account switcher on Android with Material You, and it’s now widely rolling out to the Google app and Play Store.

Following Gmail, Drive, and Docs/Sheets/Slides, Google Chat is now the latest Workspace web app to get a Material You redesign.

After previously being just a feed, Google has updated Personal Safety with a bottom bar redesign to make the experience less sprawling and more like an app.

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Android 14 DP2 has been out for a few weeks now, and our team is still managing to locate new features within. The latest is a new way to add more contrast to your Material You theme to make things easier to see and read.

The last major update to Pixel Recorder in December introduced Speaker Labels, and Google has since refreshed the website with some quirky Material You tweaks.

As we’ve been expecting since November, Google Contacts for Android now offers an “Individual Contact” homescreen widget, while some are also seeing “Favorite Contacts.”

One of the more obvious aspects of Material You is a tall bottom bar, but some variation is now emerging across Google’s apps, with the Play Store switching to a shorter version.