New icons for Google apps
Google has started rolling out revamped app icons for several of its apps. The familiar logos of apps like Drive, Gmail, Calendar and many others are getting a new design, with colour gradients and clearer shapes. These icons were tested earlier, through test versions, but now they are actually being rolled out. This means you will see them not only on your Android device, but also on the web and in iOS.
With the redesign, Google seems to be mainly responding to criticism of the previous generation of icons. According to many users, these looked too similar, because almost every app used the same four Google colours. As a result, apps were sometimes difficult to quickly distinguish from each other.
With the new style, Google opts for more variety. The icons will have softer colour gradients and clearer shapes, which should make apps more visually recognisable. Only Gmail, Maps and Google Photos still emphatically retain the familiar colour palette of red, blue, green and yellow. Earlier, the Google Maps logo was revamped.
The design around the icons is also changing. For many apps, the white "background container" disappears, making the logos look bigger and more striking. This should make for a calmer and clearer look, especially on smartphones and tablets. The updated style appears on Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Keep, Calendar, Meet and Chat, among others. For now, not all components will be updated at once. For instance, some favicons and editor logos will remain unchanged for now.
The rollout will be phased, so it may take some time before you see all the new icons appear on your devices.
