The blinding redesign of the white Google Play Store begins to unfold

Google seems to launch a major new redesign of the Google Play Store. In recent months, we have found that this design is slowly taking shape over the course of limited testing, but now it seems that design is finally coming to a wide range of devices. These designs are sometimes only for testing and are canceled, but with the launch of Android Q on the horizon, we feel that this version will stay.

The new design complies with the new "Material Design" specifications that Google launched with Android 9 Pie last year. This style uses the Google.com homepage as inspiration. So it's very, very very White. You can see a lot of this design today in Android P and Q and in the new Gmail design that was launched earlier this year.

The Play Store sells apps, movies, books, and music, and the previous design used brightly colored headers to differentiate between different sections. These colors still exist in minor highlights, but the application is mostly monochrome now. Only content thumbnails provide color keys.

In addition to the all-white design, the app now properly supports the new Android Q gesture navigation bar, making it transparent instead of the black navigation bar appeared on the old design. On the main page, the content tabs are now at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to easily reach them with one hand even on your giant Android phone. The four content tabs are "Games", "Apps", "Movies and TV" and "Books", "Music" is clearly absent. The Music section has primarily powered the Google Play Music app, but Google Music is about to disappear and should be replaced by YouTube Music. If you search the sidebar, you can still find the music section that is hidden there at the moment.

Believe it or not, this version of the Play Store's design actually features a dual-pane user interface for tablets. Google has mostly abandoned the tablet user interfaces over the years, Android tablets having failed in the market, but the design of Android applications for larger screens will become more and more important in the future . Today, tablet apps are useful for Chromebooks, which run Android apps on a very large screen. And if this idea of ​​foldable smartphone already will take off, it will mean the sneaky resurgence of Android tablets, and we'll all run with devices that open to have an 8-inch screen.

There is no single version of the Play Store that allows you to get the new user interface (although version 16 of Play Store seems to help). Like many Google design transitions, there is a code for the old and new UI of your device, and Google chooses the one that shows up with a server-side switch. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it can take weeks to get to some devices.

Get ready for many other Google app designs

With the Play Store, we are planning a quick launch of new Google app designs in the coming weeks. The next major release of Android, Android Q, is expected to be launched in a week, and dark-themed applications are a major plus. Nick Butcher, an engineer for Android, told Google I / O 2019: "All Google apps are committed to updating the dark theme before the launch of Android Q". I strongly doubt that Google will actually update "all" its applications, but if it wants to get closer to this commitment, we will soon have many applications updates.

In my opinion, many big hitters, like Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, Maps, Docs, Hangouts, Google Home, Messages, Listen to Music and Google Pay, do not support the dark Android Q mode. one or two of these applications get experimental dark modes in an A / B test (usually, they are canceled after the tests), but they have not yet officially released versions to date. It's hard to imagine long-neglected apps like Hangouts and Google Play Music being redefined and updated in dark mode, but Google is the one that says "all Google apps."

Even this new design of the Play Store does not yet support dark mode, but believe it or not, the completely white remake is good news for dark fashion lovers. To date, Google's design strategy has been to completely redesign the apps inspired by Google.com's wholly white homepage, and then use this all-white monochrome design as the basis for the dark-mode theme. . Until now, we have not seen Google use an older and colorful application design and stick to a dark mode there.

Yes, if you use Android Q and you have the new Play Store, you can access the development options and activate the "Force Dark" mode, which will give you a glimpse of what a dark mode would look like . The "Dark Force" mode of Android Q is apparent to a "smart reversal" feature. It will return your dark text on a white background to lighten the text on a dark background, but will leave the pictures and other illustrations. It may have some contrast problems as such, which is why a dark, hand-made mode is preferred. But until the official dark mode arrives, it is a good substitute.