The overall design of Gmail hasn’t changed much. It’s mostly just the colors that have changed. Like we’ve seen with Material You wallpapers, the colors that it picked for the accents in the notification shade and app drawer will match Gmail now. And that’s going to lead to some thinking its beautiful and others thinking its hideous. That will also depend on your wallpaper and what colors were chosen.
There are some minor UI tweaks available too
To the untrained eye, this update isn’t going to look much different, other than the Material You changes. But there are some other changes available here. For example, the bottom bar is now a bit taller, and it makes use of a pill-shaped indicator to highlight which tab you currently viewing. Since Google decided to add Chat, Spaces and Meet to Gmail now. For Material You, the main email list, all tabs and the compose screen are going to be a lighter shade. Meanwhile the bottom bar, search field, and buttons will all use a darker shade You can sideload this new version of Gmail onto your Android smartphone now. However, you won’t see these changes unless you are running on the Android 12 Beta. Since Material You is only available on Android 12 right now. If you’re not willing to install the beta, the stable version of Android 12 should be rolling out very soon. We’re talking days, possibly less than a week. At least for Pixel smartphones. It’s unclear if we will see these Material You design changes on other Android devices like Samsung, OnePlus and others.
