Imagine what “Material NEXT” could bring to Google applications

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With the first release of Android 12 Developer Preview, a massive overhaul of the Settings app was discovered, indicating an overhaul in Google’s hardware design. Let’s take an exploratory look at what some of Google’s other Android apps might look like with these next-gen hardware design cues.

Based on alleged Google design mockups that leaked before Android 12 Developer Preview 1, the OS update is poised to bring a major overhaul for Pixel phones and beyond. In another leak, it was said that this redesign is called “Material NEXT,” suggesting a third generation of material design guidelines.

While there were fewer surface-level changes in Android 12 Developer Preview 1 than in the leaks, our team was able to activate what appears to be a Material NEXT overhaul of the Settings app. Features include a more accessible design, similar to Samsung’s One UI, a redesigned search bar, thicker items in listings, and a design that responds to the system-wide theme colors you choose.

With these serving as preliminary guidelines, we decided to have a go at imagining how Google’s apps strength Watch with the new generation of Material Design. Throughout this article you will see models which serve to visually demonstrate the potential resources of Google could rethink those apps. Keep in mind that Material NEXT is still in the early stages of development, and each app is also subject to its own design choices.

Gmail

When Google first unveiled Material Theming as a step forward in material design, Gmail was among the first apps to get a redesign of the “Google Material Theme”. Starting our mockups on a simpler side, Gmail doesn’t need a lot of design overhaul.

  • Android 12 example
  • Gmail before
  • Gmail after (mockup)

Here, we’ve simply swapped out the “rounded rectangle” search bar for the more pill-shaped bar seen in the Settings app. The biggest change to the search bar is that the Google Account avatar is much larger and now floats outside the search bar, making it easier to tap or swipe.

Play store

The Play Store homepage made an equally perfect candidate for the revamped search bar. In fact, the Play Store is better prepared for this Material NEXT redesign for the search bar than most other apps, because Google has experimented with dropping the drawer menu before. In this particular experimental redesign, the drawer options have moved into the menu that opens when you tap your avatar.

  • Android 12 example
  • Model
  • Model

Meanwhile, other sections of the Play Store are ideal for another major part of the Material NEXT redesign. In the Settings app, each page is given some sort of banner that takes up about the top third of the screen, keeping the page’s content at your fingertips. The banner smoothly shrinks and expands as you scroll. In the second Play Store mockup above, we’ve applied this flexible banner design to the “My Apps & Games” page.

Adding another layer to the mix, we think Material NEXT is closely tied to Android 12’s theming system. When developers in the Android community were able to enable the theming system, colors were used prominently in them as well. settings. app, including as the primary background color.

  • Android 12 example
  • Front contacts
  • Contacts after (model)

For this mockup, we took the Google Contacts app, swapped out the search bar, added a top third banner, and added the default bluish white color seen in the Settings app today.

Files by Google

The last element of Material NEXT that we can mention today is that Google has revamped the homepage of the Settings app to make the elements thicker. This particular design choice will need to be used selectively by application developers, as it drastically reduces “content density” or the amount of useful information you can insert on the screen. For example, Google would do well to ignore this particular change in Gmail.

  • Android 12 example
  • Files before
  • Files after (model)

Putting it all together, the Files by Google app could get a pretty significant Material NEXT makeover. The mockup above uses a top third banner to keep everything close at hand, recolors the app background to blue by default, and uses thicker list items.

Bonus: Google Fit

Seeing these redesign suggestions – in some major cases – it’s natural to wonder how long it will take Google’s apps to catch up with what’s happening in Android 12. During the process of creating this collection, we realized that Google Fit is already using the top third flexible banner in some places. Take this for what you want.

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