Android 12was the first version of the mobile OS to feature dynamic theming. It used the Monet engine to pull the primary color palette of your wallpaper, and used variations in hue and saturation to create a tasteful palette which extended across the UI. Until recently, the Discover feed only used dynamic theming for the upper region and the Google logo, but that’s now starting to change.
Google’s Pixel Launcher on Pixel phones includes aDiscover feedaccessible if you swipe right to the very last page of your home screens. This page curates interesting news, sports scores, stock, crypto prices, and even YouTube videos. Although it’s part of the launcher, Discover is enabled by the main Google app. Now a recent update makes this Discover feed match your wallpaper better with dynamic theming, as9to5Googlereports, with the wallpaper’s colors applying to the entire UI.
The new Material You look for your Discover feed in light mode(left); dark mode(right)
Themed elements include the cards for individual news stories, which also rely on wallpaper colors instead of the hero image for articles or video thumbnails. This helps the Discover feed now retain a modicum of semblance to the home screen pages and the Pixel Launcher app list.
The new Material You change is a part of the latest Google app 14.26 beta, and for now we’re just curious how long it might last. Last month,Google swapped outGmail’s red notification icon for a dynamic themed one, but recently rolled back this change toreinstate the familiar red icon. We just hope that doesn’t happen to the Discover feed’s dynamic theming, because it looks like the change we always wanted to see.
