Material 3 Expressive Will Finally Bring Dynamic Themes To Wear OS Later This Year

Google took the wraps off its new Material 3 Expressive design language today. On the heels of some pretty thorough leaks that showed off large swaths of the new look, the official announcement didn’t show us too much we didn’t already know. We did get one interesting new piece of information, though: Material 3 Expressive is also coming to watches later this year.

Source: Google

The principles behind Material 3 Expressive on phones — expressiveness, fluidity, and generous application of accent colors — also apply on Wear OS. Elements in various interfaces change size and shape to better fit Wear OS’s small, round displays as you scroll, and a bit of the bounciness from the phone version of Material 3 Expressive made its way over, as well.

Material 3 Expressive will finally bring dynamic color themes to Wear OS, changing the color of certain visual elements to match the one you picked for your watch face.

Source: Google

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Google says that with Material 3 Expressive, Wear OS’s widget-like Tiles are “more space-efficient and engaging,” though that’ll only apply to Tiles that have been redesigned specifically with Material 3 Expressive in mind. Google’s own suite of Tile-equipped apps will presumably be at the front of that line.

Visual updates all around

Source: Google

If you’re worried that all these splashy new visual elements might impact battery life, Google claims that the forthcoming Wear OS 6 update will bring up to a 10 percent improvement on that front, even with Material 3 Expressive rolled out. We don’t know when exactly Wear OS 6 is landing, however.

We also don’t know quite when Material 3 Expressive will make its way to Wear OS. Google’s given a vague timeline for when we should expect to see the new look on both smartphones and Wear OS watches: it’s coming to Pixel phones and wearables “later this year.”

Google Pixel Watch 3

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Google’s Pixel Watch 3 will help kick off the Material 3 Expressive era with Wear OS 6 later this year.