What gets the Material You rework in Beta 4?
The biggest change is, of course, to the Google search bar. For clarity, that’s the bar-style widget placed on the home screen featuring the Google “G” logo and a mic icon. And that’s typically used to access Google search or voice search. With the update to Android 12 Beta 4 installed, that bar can be given a new Material You theme. Once applied, the theme takes the Google logo and mic icon and recolors them. More directly, recoloring them with the colors chosen from the wallpaper set by the user. Secondary to that, four new app icons appear to be confirmed for a similar recolor. Those are still all Google apps, as with previous themeable icons, and include Google Chat and Tasks, as well as Pixel Tips — for Google Pixel users — and Digital Wellbeing. The implication, of course, is that Google is attempting to wrap up adding support for Material You theming in all of its own icons.
When does Android 12 launch?
Now, exactly when any given handset will receive Android 12 is going to be entirely up to OEMs. But the final version of the OS update should be ready by sometime in Q3 2021. The current expectation is that it will arrive sometime in September, more specifically. As noted above, there still don’t appear to be any third-party apps supporting the UI change just yet. But Material You is a big part of that update. So third-party developers will likely begin adding support for their own icons prior to the final launch.
