Google is working on a big UI overhaul for Android

When Google released the fourth beta of Android 16 this month, many users were disappointed by the lack of major UI changes. As Beta 4 is the final beta, it’s likely the stable Android 16 release won’t look much different than last year’s release. However, that might not hold true for subsequent updates. Google recently confirmed it will unveil a new version of its Material Design theme at its upcoming developer conference, and we’ve already caught glimpses of these design changes in Android—including a notable increase in background blur effects. Ahead of I/O next month, here’s an early look at Google’s upcoming Android redesign.
↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority

With Android, it’s hard to really care about changes like these because it will take forever and a day for the Android ecosystem to catch up, and in general in mobile computing, most people use applications that have zero respect for platform integration anyway, preferring their own shit branding and UI “design” over that of the platform they’re running on. In other words, most people will never really encounter many of these changes, unless they’re Pixel users.

That being said, these changes seem to basically replace a lot of “window” backgrounds with a blur, which makes everything feel more airy and brighter – so much so that in screenshots purporting to show dark mode, it looks like light mode. This doesn’t really seem like the “big UI overhaul” the linked article claims it to be, but there might be more changes on the way we haven’t seen yet.

Instead of UI changes, I’m much more concerned about how much worse Google will be making Android by shoving Clippy into every corner of the operating system.