Here's how Material 3 Expressive may come to Google Drive (APK teardown)
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Google's preparing a handful of changes to the interface for its Drive Android app.
The tweaks appear to follow Material 3 Expressive guidance, ahead of Google's plans to widely embrace the look later this year.
Google has already started making similar changes to its other Android apps, like Keep.
Google's got a hot new look for 2025, and we're not just talking about that dreamy new smooth-rainbow G; this week the company jumped the gun on Google I/O with its early Android Show announcements, including a full unveiling of Material 3 Expressive. The newly refreshed design language is about to become the face of Android and its apps as we push further into the year, but we've already had the opportunity to bring you a few early previews of how certain apps are getting ready for it. That trend continues today, as we check out some of the latest changes to Drive.
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Material 3 Expressive is a lot of things: it's bold, it's colorful, it's springy. And while it will be a little while before we're seeing it everywhere, Google developers have already gotten a head start implementing its Expressive design UI changes across the company's vast software library. Today we're looking at how that's impacting Google Drive, as we tear into the new 2.25.190.0.all.alldpi release.
Over on the left here, we've got our current look for Drive, both in light and dark themes. And while that looks fine, the Material 3 Expressive changes we've been able to preview on the right side here offer a denser, arguably more engaging view.
It's a lot of subtle changes that individually add up to a more cohesive shift. Bigger icons match the labels they're attached to more naturally. The style switcher clearly presents both grid and list options, better telegraphing its purpose. And of course we've got that colorful tweak to the floating action button.
Maybe the most motion is happening up top, where we get a fatter search bar (complete with Gemini icon) that splits off from the hamburger menu and account switcher icons that now flank it. If that feels familiar, there's a good reason for that, as it's largely the same redesign we saw developers working on for Google Keep last week.
Like we said, so far this represents a bunch of smaller tweaks that themselves may not be hugely impactful, but as we consider them all together, we can start to see the direction Google is trying to move things in with this Material 3 Expressive push. As we start getting into summer 2025, expect to see a lot more progress along similar lines — we'll keep working to identify those changes ahead of them going public, and share an early look with you.
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