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Google apps on iOS have long been criticized for not feeling native to the platform. Earlier this year, the company’s designers overhauled their approach to developing iOS apps and opted for a change.
Google apps on iOS have long looked and performed almost identically to their Android counterparts. That’s fine in and of itself and it’s the prerogative of the company, but Apple enthusiasts have complained that Google apps don’t follow the conventions and common iOS ‘feel’, causing a problem. inconsistent user experience between owner and third party customers.
Behind the scenes, this was due to the company’s belief in “shar[ing] Components of the user interface on Google. By creating their own libraries, another goal was to “fill in the gaps in UIKit”, Apple’s framework for building applications.
This is according to Jeff Verkoeyen, head of personnel engineering for Google Design on Apple platforms, in a Twitter feed earlier this week. All of this work was ultimately open source as Hardware Components for iOS (MDC) to allow any third-party developer to adopt the same UI elements used by Google’s iPhone and iPad apps, like action buttons. floats (FAB), chips and snack bars.
But as we continued to strive for cross-platform pixel parity, our iOS components moved further and further away from the fundamentals of the Apple platform, as those foundations also changed year over year.
In response, Google in early 2021 “began an in-depth assessment of what it means to create a signature Google experience on Apple platforms,” and asked:
Does a switch really have to be custom built in alignment with a generic design system? Or can it be enough to just use the system solution and move on?
Google concluded that it was time for this last route, and that Apple’s UIKit had mature enough for internal needs. The company no longer had to maintain most of the custom components it has built over the years, including the bars, lists and menus of the application (at the top).
Instead, it will adopt standard controls and apply “light branding touches” to maintain the look of Google on iOS. Some custom components are still needed and will now benefit from “more attention and focus”. It remains to be seen how much (or even if) Google’s iPhone apps will differ from their Android versions.
As part of this change, Google put Material’s iOS libraries in “maintenance mode” in July. New versions and bug fixes will be limited as the documentation is no longer updated. The company’s official advice to former developer users is to “follow Apple’s human interface guidelines and consider using modern UIKit or SwiftUI components instead.” That said, he also plugged in Flutter as a way to “get a material look on all platforms.”
Besides app usability, Google quickly embraced recent iOS features. This includes widgets for most major services and support for becoming the default browser or email client. In fact, the Google Photos widget debuted on iOS last year before coming to Android in August.
In the meantime, it remains to be seen how Material You will impact Google apps on iOS. On Android, Gmail, Calendar, Docs / Sheets / Slides, Drive, Keep, and Meet have all been updated with Google’s custom design language. The navigation is unchanged, but various navigation elements have been changed, such as the circular FAB turning into a rounded square. The biggest change, however, is Dynamic Color, where the entire app adopts a color scheme based on your wallpaper. DC is unlikely to come to iOS, and updated apps will end up using a blue tint, like on older versions of Android.
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