According to a recent report by 9to5Google, Google is now rolling out the Material You design, which is the name of the theme on Android 12. However, it is not yet complete and is a work-in-progress affair. Notably, the bottom bar is now taller. This provides more room for placing the pill-shaped buttons. The highlight and other elements of Google Photos are now blue. Apparently, this also means that the Google Photos app is not making use of the Dynamic color. It is similar to Google Phone’s Material You theme. However, it is expected to change for Pixel owners in the future. The Material You theme for Google Photos blends the other elements of the app into the background. While buttons for Favorites, Utilities, Archive, and Trash have an elevated and filled look.
Google Photos Material You design is rolling out for version 5.59
The album covers are have rounded corners, following the default Material You theme design of Android 12. Apart from all these elements, the tool carousel in the image/video editor also gets a bit of elevation. Moreover, the Search bar is now placed at the top, which is pill-shaped. All in all, the overall design of the Google Photos app goes in symmetry with all the other Google stock apps that have already been updated with Material You design. As already mentioned, the Google Photos Material Design doesn’t come with Dynamic color support, but we expect it to arrive in future updates. This new update for the Google Photos app is now live and is arriving with app version 5.59. The app will be available via the Google Play Store. Do note that it isn’t widely available yet. Recently, Google updated its Phone app with a Material You theme for Android 12 users. So, it seems like Google wants to update all of its stock apps with the latest Android 12 design language before the operating system goes live for all users. As of now, all we know is that Google is planning to release the stable version of the Android 12 operating system on October 4. Along with the new design language, Android 12 is also expected to bring some new features for Android devices.
