Summary
- Android 16 will introduce a significant UI overhaul with the Material 3 Expressive design, elements of which are now appearing in app betas like Google Calendar.
- The Google Calendar beta (version 2025.19.0) reveals subtle UI changes such as a redesigned floating action button (FAB) with a ‘Birthday’ option and an ‘X’ to close, rounded corners for month and event chips, and the implementation of the Google Sans Flex font.
- While the full Material 3 Expressive redesign won’t be in the initial stable release of Android 16 next month, users can expect to see more of these changes in a beta launching soon, with a wider rollout potentially occurring later in the year via a Pixel Feature Drop.
Android 16 is going to be a major revamp, especially when it comes to UI changes.
The major operating system update, which is scheduled to go live in stable next month, will lay the foundation for what will ultimately be known as the Material 3 Expressive design, and some of those design changes are starting to appear across apps now.
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For what it’s worth, the Material 3 redesign, which is expected to bring bigger buttons, bolder fonts, and new UI animations, wouldn’t actually go live in stable. Instead, as confirmed by Google, the changes will land later in the year, potentially with a Pixel Feature Drop.
Google will, however, begin testing the changes as part of a new Android 16 beta going live “by the end of this month,” and apps are starting to show signs of this early testing too. Google Calendar, as highlighted by the folks over at Android Authority, is one such app.
FAB gets a ‘Birthday’ chip
It’s worth noting that the screenshots highlighted above don’t depict what the user-facing Google Calendar app looks like at the moment. The new UI was manually enabled in Google Calendar version 2025.19.0-757507108-release, surfacing the in-development UI that should be widely available later this year.
The expressive redesign isn’t a huge departure from the current UI, at least within Google Calendar, with the biggest change being a redesigned FAB. The new FAB seemingly adds a new ‘Birthday’ tile, paired with the usual ‘Task’ and ‘Event’ chips. The redesign also adds a new button to ‘X’ out of the menu, replacing the current ‘tap-outside-to-exit’ functionality.
Additionally, instead of being located to the left, text like ‘Task’ and ‘Event’ now sit within the chip itself.
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Elsewhere, chips for individual months appear rounder than they currently do, and the same goes for individual events. Google also seems to be implementing its new Google Sans Flex font throughout the application, matching the font used in the tech giant’s upcoming Google Services settings page refresh.
These changes, although very iterative in the grand scheme, would collectively contribute to Android 16’s expressive aesthetic. We’re excited to try out the redesign as soon as Google pushes it out sometime later this month.
Will you be installing the new beta? Or are you hopping out to install the stable Android 16 update? Let us know in the comments below.
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