Android Apps That Support Google's "Material You"
Material You was unveiled to “transform design for Android, for Google and for the entire tech industry.” It allows you to personalize your phone’s theme color based on the wallpaper you have set, thus making your phone interface more vibrant. Imagine utilizing the dynamic theming features of Material You on your Android phone just as you enjoy playing online casino games on Vulkan. Sounds great, isn’t it?
Keep reading to learn all you need to know about Material You.
Material You is “a radical new way to think about design.” It is the newest design language from Google that brings a more accessible, adaptive and colorful experience for users. Just as the name suggests, Material You is all about personalization and was first introduced with Android 12 on Pixel phones.
With Material You, Google wishes to amalgamate its hardware and software teams as well as dictate the look and feel of its products for several years to come. Contrary to those rigid design paradigms of the past, Material You extracts its colors from the part of your Android phone that you have maximum control over — the wallpaper.
More and more apps are nowadays taking advantage of the Material You philosophy, and we have rounded up the best Android apps for you. Check it out below!
Top 5 "Material You" Android Apps Available Right Now
1. Infinity for Reddit
Size: 14MB
Price: Free to download
In-app purchases: No
Rating on Google Play: 4.6 stars
Infinity for Reddit is a popular third-party application for Reddit. This beautiful, feature-rich app offers a great browsing experience to users. Infinity for Reddit supports Material You, and if you want to try out the new design language, this is one of the best Android apps out there.
Users can enjoy a simple interface with most options stuffed away in the hamburger menu. You can sort posts by the usual filters like "new," "top,” “hot” and "controversial." Also, Infinity comes with a “Lazy Mode” that scrolls posts automatically.
2. KWGT
Size: 25MB
Price: Free to download
In-app purchases: $5.99
Rating on Google Play: 4.2 stars
KWGT is an incredibly great choice for Material You-style widgets. It is a custom widget maker that allows users to create some cool, interesting widgets on their own. Also, you can download custom widgets made by other people, like Android 12 KWGT, for instance. It contains wallpapers that change with your wallpaper, just like Google’s Material You widgets on Android 12.
KWGT offers endless possibilities, and we are sure to see an increase in the number of widget packs that adopt Material You. So, it’s worth giving KWGT a shot.
3. Swift Walls
Size: 6.7MB
Price: Free to download
In-app purchases: $0.99 to $9.99
Rating on Google Play: 4.1 stars
The Swift Walls is one of the top Android apps that supports the dynamic colors of Material You. Swift Walls works like any other typical wallpaper app where you can browse through various wallpapers, select the one you like, and set it as your wallpaper. There is also a preview mode where you can sort through various categories, and a lot of filters are available too.
The UI of Swift Walls is reminiscent of Android 12. It looks quite familiar to the Wallpapers and Styles menu in Android 12 on Pixel smartphones. So, if you are on the lookout for a good wallpaper app that supports Material You, Swift Walls is worth it.
4. Pix Material You Icons
Size: 22.93MB
Price: $1.49
In-app purchases: $0.99 to $9.99
Rating on Google Play: 4.4 stars
Pix Material You Icons is an application containing both icons and widgets. The icons in this icon and widget pack are compatible with Google’s Material You. Even though you need to reset the icons after every wallpaper change, it does work.
The app also comprises a huge selection of easy-to-use widgets that allow you to pull colors from wallpapers through the Material You setup. However, one aspect to consider regarding this app is that users need a third-party launcher to utilize it. This is because the Pixel Launcher doesn’t support icon packs.
5. Inware
Size: 3.6MB
Price: Free to download
In-app purchases: No
Rating on Google Play: 4.6 stars
Inware is a simple, nice app that’s designed for the geeks within us. Be it software or hardware, it has almost all types of information related to your phone. Your device’s amount of RAM, refresh rate, screen size, processor, resolution, camera specifications, and battery backup are just some of the parameters that Inware displays. Although Inware has a somewhat undistinguished design, the addition of Material You together with a dark theme makes this app quite fun to use.
Material You is the biggest design change to Android since 2014. With this design approach, Google shows that it believes the future of the interface should be shaped by its users.
Material You has a huge visual overhaul, and with Android apps that let you try it out, you can certainly make the most of Google’s newest design language. We are sure that with time, more Android apps will adopt the guidelines of Material You.
