Material You is quite divisive, with some people convinced it’s the best design update Google has ever introduced and others diametrically opposed to the playfulness it introduces. Scott may worry that it could lead to an ecosystem of bland, same-looking applications, I have a much more positive outlook. For me, Material You is a chance for software to become perfectly adapted to everyone’s individual taste and the one thing that’s most easily personalized on every device: the wallpaper.
I probably don’t have to introduce you to Material You at this point, but just in case you’re not familiar with it, a quick refresher. It’s the latest iteration of Google’s Material Design system, which it introduced back in 2014 alongside Android 5 Lollipop in an effort to unify app design across its services and different form factors. While Material Design has always been more of a guideline and not a set-in-stone ruleset, especially following the 2018 Material Theming refresh, Material You is an even stronger departure from the rigorous design paradigms of the past.
This is an exciting evolution, as it’s based on the one thing that almost everyone changes as soon as they get a new phone — the wallpaper. It’s the one part of your device where you can basically do everything you want to design-wise, with no rules in place about what’s tasteful and what isn’t. Some people love to personalize their phones with landscapes or abstract art, while others prefer a single color. Many use pictures of their loved ones or pets. Others love to show their loyalty to a group or franchise, be it sports, bands, brands, games, movies, or any other kind of fandom. It’s possible to go even wilder with wallpapers that show off a phone’s interior, or an app that automatically changes backgrounds periodically.
While you can additionally personalize your phone with cases and skins, you have to jump through a few more hoops to get a really unique look, often costing you extra money, too. You’re completely free to choose whatever you wish for your wallpaper, though, at no charge (barring paid-for wallpaper apps and digital artworks, of course).
On Pixel phones, Android 12 bases its interface on the dominant colors of your homescreen background, with system UI elements, widgets, app icons, and first-party app interfaces tapping into this engine to provide you with a unique look that you might not find on any other phone in the world — that’s particularly true if you opt for an image that you shot yourself. With Material You analyzing every last detail of your wallpaper (locally on your phone), it will extract ever so slightly different colors and use those to give you a one-of-a-kind experience on your phone.
Google has long started experimenting with custom themes, most notably on Android 10 and 11, where it was possible to change icons, shapes, fonts, and colors for a few system UI elements. It’s a bummer that Android 12 lost this ability, bringing everyone back to the default round icons, but Material You makes up for that with its effortlessness. You can just set a new wallpaper and let it do its magic, with no further tweaking needed — though it’s possible to choose from up to three alternative custom color palettes and four standard colors if you’re so inclined.
There will always be enthusiasts that enjoy using or creating custom icons for their third-party launchers that come in all shapes and sizes, but the wallpaper is likely the one common denominator that also includes regular folks who are not particularly into theming and modding. Material You’s design options are front and center, and they can’t be avoided, no matter how little you know about theme customization.
In a perfect world, every single Android app would introduce Material You elements, giving you a unique experience in every application you use. Google was pretty fast about adding support in its own apps, which gives us a glimpse at how Android could look in a year or two. By just changing your wallpaper, you might be able to tweak all of your app interfaces to your liking, with colors you prefer to see. Couple that with light and dark mode, and you have a huge palette to play with. A small selection of apps already allow you to tweak their UI (like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Kindle, a handful of Reddit clients), but having a system-wide toggle in the form of your wallpaper makes it a much less tedious process to refresh the look and feel of your favorite apps.
Just like Material Design adapted and grew over time, I’m confident that Material You will also mature over the next few months and years.
Of course, that’s the ideal vision. It’s possible that many big third-party developers aren’t ready to give up their brand identity for Material You, just like many popular apps were reluctant to jump on Material Design back in the day. I also appreciate the argument that Material You will make apps look bland and boring, stripping them of any individuality that could make them more fun to use or help users differentiate them at a glance. However, just like Material Design adapted and grew over time, I’m confident that Material You will also mature over the next few months and years. Perhaps the color adjustments will be subtle enough that they won’t fully dominate applications anymore, or perhaps apps will be able to use the theming engine in some novel, less in-your-face way we can’t imagine just yet.
It’s clear that Material You is a bold experiment, but to me, it looks like it’s a gamble that pays off. The new visual direction has more people talking about Google’s latest phones — the excellent Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro — and about design in general, with many saying that it makes iOS look long in the tooth. It’s entirely possible that Google is in the process of triggering a whole new wave of app design paradigms across multiple competing platforms, much like it did with its 2014 Material Design launch. I, for one, am looking forward to this brave new world. If you’d like to read an opposing position, check out Scott’s post on everything he hates about Material You.
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