Add your favorite material to Google’s flagship application
Google introduced the Material You evolution of its design language with the release of Android 12. Many of the company’s apps quickly adopted the new wallpaper’s color-based design. However, two years later there is still work to be done. The company’s flagship product, Search, was one of the last big apps to get a makeover, and with its current beta of 14.4, it finally does, adding new design elements to all Android phones.
The first time you launch the Google app after installing the 14.4 update, you may not immediately notice a difference. The discover and search screens now have the new Material Design look applied only to the bottom bar, showing a pill shape below the active tab. Currently this part of the interface also does not follow the mobile phone color theme and is still under development. The rest of the interface hasn’t changed, and the search bar and Discover articles look the same as before.
new google app design
However, other parts of the app are a little better. The Google app offers a new account switcher now also available on the web. You can access it by tapping your profile picture in the top right corner. This panel will be displayed in the Material You color based on your wallpaper. Compared to previous iterations, it offers more rounded corners and gathers the most important options into an extra visually distinct box.
What the old Google app looked like
Heading into the settings, you’ll find a similar redesign, but here, Material You is still missing as well. The Search option in Settings now appears directly below the title instead of a small magnifying glass icon next to it, making it more prominent.on individual pages like Universal You’ll also notice that the Google app has an MD3 toggle, which is a bit different than what we’ve seen in other apps so far. 9to5Google says he’s one of the first, if not the first, Google app to use this design.
Google still has some work to do, especially when it comes to the search interface itself, but the company has made great strides with this redesign. One of our favorite apps now matches other Google apps and some third-party services. The new knowledge panels that appear when you search for topics of interest, such as celebrities and movies, are also now better displayed.
Google app updates are now rolling out to users participating in the Play Store beta program. If you’d like to automatically revert to the stable channel once this version number is exceeded, you can also get it from APK Mirror.