Here's An Early Look At The Material 3 Expressive Changes Headed To Google Photos (APK Teardown)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

TL;DR

Google Photos could soon receive a redesigned homepage that follows Android’s new Material 3 Expressive design language.
The updated homepage will replace the app’s name at the top with its icon and introduce a new loading animation.
The redesigned homepage is expected to arrive later this year, and Google could make further changes before it hits the stable channel.

Google Photos is set to receive a visual revamp in line with Android’s new Material 3 Expressive design language. Thanks to an official survey, we first got a peek at the app’s redesigned homepage earlier this year. We’ve now spotted the updated interface in the latest Google Photos release (version 7.30) and enabled it manually to give you an early look ahead of the rollout.

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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

As seen previously, Google Photos’ updated homepage no longer features the app’s name at the top. Instead, it only shows the app’s logo in the top left corner. Google has also updated the app’s loading icon to match Android’s Material 3 Expressive changes. We also get another look at the redesigned Memories cards we first spotted in a teardown earlier this month.

The current release does not include the floating bottom bar and rounded image previews we saw in the survey, but that doesn’t mean Google has shelved these changes. The company could introduce these elements before the updated homepage reaches users, likely alongside the stable Android 16 QPR1 release later this year. We’ll update this post as soon as we have additional details.

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