The app has a few tablet-specific interface changes in its latest release
The arrival of Android 13 is one of the best things to happen to the operating system in a long time. It adds functional beauty to the Material You design guidelines Google introduced with its predecessor, Android 12. Those guidelines have themselves evolved since their introduction, leaving a few first-party Google apps playing catch-up. The latest to try on a new look is Google News, as the app updates its tablet view with a few Material Design 3 (MD3) components.
Google News 5.71 introduces a bunch of visual changes that you’ll notice when using the app on Android tablets, as shared in the Google News Telegram group. The most noticeable tweak is the vertical navigation rail on the left-hand side with buttons for sections like Headlines, Newsstand, Following, and For You. This design is a departure from the longitudinal navigation rail at the bottom, still seen in the app on phones.
Other noteworthy differences include a card-style layout for the news content with rounded corners up top, separating the scrollable section for articles and app settings from fixed components of the UI, like the navigation rail and header. The search bar has also transitioned from a bland rectangle to one with rounded corners.
These changes aren’t surprising, because we saw the first hints of Material You design coming to the Google News app back in May of last year. Subsequently, Google updated many other first-party apps in spec with MD3 guidelines, like Google TV.
If you’re a tablet user and looking to check out the changes for yourself, version 5.72 of Google News is available on APKMirror, ready for you to install.
