Compared to Android, only some of Google’s iOS apps use the latest version of Material Design. Gmail for iPhone and iPad was finally updated with a Material 3 redesign today.
On the homepage, the search bar is now pill-shaped instead of a rounded rectangle. The bottom bar, if you have the integrated Google Chat and/or Meet experience enabled, notes your current tab with another pill instead of just filling in or highlighting the icon.
Blue is used as the accent color throughout the app, with red being mostly retired. Different shades are used depending on light or dark theme.
On Android, Material You takes things a step further and creates a “Dynamic Color” theme based on your phone’s wallpaper. That’s applied across first-party apps and OS elements for a visually cohesive experience. No such mechanism is in place on iOS after all these years. It would have been interesting if Google built an Account-level picker for these platforms (or synced it from Android in the case of the web).
Old vs. new
The “Compose” floating action button (FAB) becomes a rounded rectangle with a pretty vibrant shade of blue when dark mode is enabled. The hamburger menu/navigation drawer does not appear to have been updated today.
When opening an email, you’ll notice that the top-right corner overflow icon goes from three vertical dots to horizontal ones placed in a circle.
Google Chat for iOS was also recently updated with Material You, though it already leveraged the floating bottom bar. Other Workspace apps like Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet are unchanged today.
Other first-party apps with Material 3 include Google (Search) app, Maps (bottom bar), Photos, Home, Translate, and Gemini.
Version 6.0.250119 of Gmail for iPhone and iPad with this Material 3 redesign rolled out today via the App Store.
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