The Google account switcher is finally getting a fresh coat of paint
Google has spent the last couple of years giving its first-party apps a makeover in line with its Material You design philosophy. Under this ethos, the goal is to give those apps a personal touch while maintaining visual consistency across the board. Material You’s dynamic color theming, in particular, has made its way to almost every part of the Google apps’ interfaces except for one holdout: the account switcher. This appears to be changing soon, as Google Messages has been spotted with a redesigned account switcher, complete with Dynamic Color theming.
As spotted by 9to5Google, the messaging app has gained an updated account switcher that features Material You’s unique theming. That said, the new change doesn’t appear to be widely available just yet. But when it does become public (which there should be no doubt about), you’ll be greeted with a refreshed sheet that highlights your active account above all. The most noticeable difference is the color of that pop-up, which should match the hue you’ve chosen with the help of Material You’s color picker engine.
At present, the active account field is separated from the rest of the sheet by a line and its background is consistent with the rest of the pop-up. Another minor tweak that’s coming to the account switcher is the rectangular button with rounded corners for the “Manage your Google Account” option. Currently, that button is housed in a pill. The sheet itself will also have rounded corners when this refresh becomes widely available.
However, this isn’t the first time that this change has come to light. 9to5 notes that Messages exhibited this tweak back in September. A few other first-party apps have also adopted the rounded, rectangular button, including Google TV.
Seeing as the change is not yet visible to everyone, Google is presumably putting the finishing touches on it before it goes into production. Nonetheless, it’s a safe bet that these changes will also arrive in some form for other Google apps in the future, not just Messages.
While the fresh coat of paint may seem like a minor update to a particular UI element that you don’t often interact with (unless you have multiple Google accounts), it is a step forward in the spread of Material You.
