Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is getting ready to make the icons on the Settings homepage extra colourful.
- That is a part of Google’s effort to revamp the Settings app to be extra expressive.
- It’s unclear if coloured icons are a part of Google’s new Materials Design 3 Expressive theme.
Earlier this week, we discovered proof indicating Google will introduce an expressive new Material Design theme at subsequent month’s Google I/O developer convention. Though a number of mentions and potential examples of this new theme have surfaced, the specifics of what the up to date framework entails stay unclear. Nonetheless, within the newest Android beta launched just lately, we noticed new proof suggesting that colourful icons could possibly be a part of Google’s up to date design pointers.
Whereas the fourth beta of Android 16 doesn’t carry main UI adjustments, Google did introduce updates to the expressive redesign it’s developing for Settings. Particularly, the Settings homepage (the primary web page displayed when opening the app) is getting colourful new icons for every entry. Presently, these entries characteristic easy grey, borderless icons to the left of the textual content. Within the expressive redesign, nonetheless, these identical icons are actually enclosed inside circles of various colours, including some visible aptitude to the web page.
Right here’s what the Settings homepage presently seems like within the newest Android 15 launch:
And right here’s what the Settings homepage seems like in Android 16 Beta 4 with the expressive redesign enabled:
The ‘Digital Wellbeing & parental controls’ entry retains its grey icon as a result of it’s equipped by the separate Digital Wellbeing app, not the Settings app itself. This inconsistency exhibits Google nonetheless has work to do earlier than rolling out the expressive redesign. Because of this, we don’t anticipate this new design—or the colourful icons—to seem within the preliminary secure launch of Android 16. As an alternative, the up to date Settings look will probably debut in a later Android 16 quarterly launch, or even perhaps be held again till Android 17 subsequent yr.
It’s doable the colours and iconography may change earlier than this new design formally rolls out. Presently, there’s no obvious logic behind the particular background shade selections for every icon, though some associated entries do appear to share the identical shade.
What do you consider these colourful new icons within the Settings app? Are you a fan, or do you favor the outdated grayscale look? Tell us within the feedback under!
