It’s no secrete that Google is working on adding Material You flare to many of its first-party apps ahead of the Android 12 public release. Chrome was among the first apps to gain dynamic color support, and over time we have seen more UI elements of Chrome taking on Material You colors. Now, the latest Chrome Canary is bringing full support for Material You’s dynamic theming.
Google recently updated the dynamic color flag on Chrome for Android with full support for dynamic colors. As spotted by Android Police, this new flag is live in the latest version of Chrome Canary, allowing users to apply a fresh coat of Material You across Chrome's UI.
To try it out, you'll need to enable two flags. Paste the following URLs into Chrome’s address bar:
- chrome:flags#theme-refactor-android
- chrome:flags#dynamic-color-android
Set the first flag to “Enabled” and the second to “Enabled (full)" and then restart the browser. If you don’t see any changes, you might have to restart the browser once again.
As you can see in the screenshots attached below, many portions of Chrome, including the homepage, tab grid view, the address bar, will take on colors from your wallpaper once you enable these flags.
Android Police notes that the feature is still a work in progress as some elements, such as the context menu, don’t yet match the color of your wallpaper.
Google is also readying a Material You redesign for Messages, Google Contacts, and Gboard. Besides Google apps, we have seen several third-party apps adding support for Material You colors, including Tasker, Sleep as Android, and Swirlwalls. Once Google publishes documentation on Material You, this list will likely grow even further.
If you have a Pixel phone running the latest Android 12 beta, you can try out Chrome’s new Material You look by installing the latest Canary release from the link below.
Screenshots courtesy: Android Police
Featured image background: Zheano Blog