Gboard Material You redesign and deployment on Android 12

With beta 3 earlier this week, Google’s upcoming design language is appearing in more places in the operating system. Some Android 12 users are now seeing the redesign of the Gboard hardware you have live on.

Update 7/20: The Gboard Material You redesign, with its “Dynamic Color” option in the “Theme” settings, is appearing for more people today after the initial availability last week. However, it is not yet available to all users.

That said, many people see the Google Sans font in Gboard on Android 12. Older devices don’t yet see this change. The most obvious differences are the capital letters “G” and “Q” – which are slightly larger.

Original 7/16: As we previously enabled last month, the Google keyboard redesign varies depending on whether or not you have “key borders” enabled. If you don’t, the ‘? 123’ key and space bar are placed in pill-shaped buttons and take on a rather dull shade depending on your system color.

Meanwhile, the return key has a similar shape, but – along with the “develop” key in the top suggestion strip – is much brighter and more vivid in color. The test of gesture is similar and rather deliciously thematic.

If borders are on, “back” and “expand” are the brightest keys and placed in circles. ‘123?’ is also a circle and quite dark. However, there is a third level of key theme that falls between the other two shades for caps lock, comma, period, and backspace. Finally, the background is themed, while all the other keys are lighter / white.

A handful of users are seeing this redesign of Gboard Material You, but it’s not widely available yet. Beta and stable Gboard users are facing this gradual rollout. For more color examples, check out our article from last month.

Google’s keyboard app has undergone a number of A / B tests in recent months, including a variant using a foil. However, we think this appears to be the final design.

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