The latest feature drop brings the dynamic color themes to your boot-up animation
We noticed that Google’s extensive changelog for the latest Feature Drop delivered one enjoyable surprise: Material You-themed dynamic boot screens. We didn’t know what that would look like at the time, but here are a handful of examples that show off the colors you might see courtesy of an updated Pixel 5a.
The feature itself wasn’t a surprise, but we were expecting this to arrive later in Android 12L (that upcoming version of Android 12 meant to roll out new features and enhancements for big screens). That wasn’t exactly an official timeline, though, and it looks like Google was able to deliver it early, and it looks and works mostly great.
So far as we can tell, it should be available for all currently supported Pixels — that’s the Pixel 3a/3a XL, 4/ 4 XL, 4a, 4a 5G, Pixel 5, and Pixel 5a. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro don’t have the update just yet and won’t until next week, but we assume it will work on those phones as well once it lands. The Pixel 3 series is no longer supported, and though it will get one last bug-fixing update, it’s not clear if it will include things from the December 2021 Feature Drop update. For context, the Pixel 2 series did not get Feature Drop changes for December 2020 in its final roundup update.
If the images and video above don’t do enough to explain what’s happening, the short version is that Material You colors now sync through to the Pixel boot screen as well when running the latest update. The Google logo itself, which appears first, retains its standard brand-identifying colors. But the animation that turns into the Google G (and the associated loading bar) will both pull from your phone’s Material You background-inherited colors instead. Sometimes the colors blend into each other pretty well; other times they stand out with stark contrast — the same issue Material You can have as an accent in other places depending on the colors it chooses.
In my testing, it worked mostly fine, but I once rebooted to see the default colors appear, even though I had Material You colors applied to other parts of the software. Your mileage may vary. Paired with the dark theme boot screen Pixels have enjoyed for some years now, Google’s keeping things snazzy, even when rebooting.
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