Gboard's new Material You change makes themes less exciting

Gboard is one of the best keyboard apps that you can find on both Android and iOS. The app comes installed on many Android devices by default, but it still provides one of the most complete typing experiences that you’ll find on mobile devices, offering a wealth of features and updates that continue to make the experience better.

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Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?

Of course, not everything is about big flashy features, and Google does often make smaller changes as well. In a recent beta update we saw the brand introduce new fonts, which offered a subtle change, and now it looks like Google is tweaking its Dynamic Color option, making slight changes to a variety of keys to its light and dark themes.

Gboard is getting less playful

Source: 9to5Google

The change was spotted by the folks at 9to5Google, highlighting that the “shift, ?123, comma/emoji, period, enter, and backspace, as well as the menu button” are all colored the same now, bringing a more harmonious look. While there wasn’t anything wrong with the previous color scheme, it did use different sets of colors, which, compared to the update, looked a little more playful.

With that said, you’ll still have the option of personalizing the experience using custom colors based on your background image, but it appears that the new setting will extrapolate fewer colors from the image going forward. For the time being, you won’t have to worry too much about this change since it is only available in beta right now, in very limited testing.

Trying on several Pixel phones, 9to5Google were only able to get the new color option to appear on one phone. It’s unclear if this change will roll out widely, or if it’s just something being tested in small numbers. But it’s something that could come up in the public version soon. But we doubt most will even notice such a small difference.