The Google app for your phone is getting redesigned settings
When Google launched Material Design 3 and Material You alongside Android 12, the company was quick to add the new design language to many of its apps. A big outlier certainly is the Google app, which still doesn’t look like a native part of the new Android theme, coming without tinted backgrounds and no new bottom navigation bar buttons. The company is slowly changing this and is preparing to launch a drastically redesigned app. In the meantime, a new settings page has been added for a few users that already adheres to some of the Material Design 3 guidelines.
As Esper’s senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman shared with us, Google is rolling out a redesigned settings panel. Like other Material You apps, it comes with a tinted background, though it’s not clear if it’s adhering to the system theme. On top of that, you can see the rest of the usual Material Design 3 elements. The “Settings” header has grown much bigger and the search function has been moved into a big search bar below the header that makes it easier to spot. The top level options mostly remain the same in the new design, but a second line was added to them with some examples of which options sit within them, making much better use of the available space.
First 2: New Google app settings. Last 2: Old Google apps settings
Within the sections, the new design language is accompanied by some reshuffled options. What’s more notable than that is that the switches for options like “Recent pages” or “Open web pages in the app” have been exchanged for redesigned toggle first introduced in Android 12.
The revamped Google app settings are much more in line with the Android 13 system settings. The same basic layout with a big header and a prominent search bar below it also exists in the system settings, complete with the dual-line entries for individual sections that give you more of an idea of what you can find within them.
For comparison: Android 13 system settings
So far, we haven’t been able to see the redesigned Google app settings for ourselves despite having the latest version of the Google app installed on our devices. The redesign is likely rolling out as a server-side update. We also don’t know if the new settings will come as part of the bigger app redesign mentioned earlier or if they are separate.
Either way, it’s great to see Google finally updating what is likely its most important app with the new design language. It’s possible that the company has been hesitant so far as not alienate users who haven’t updated to the new Android releases yet.