Google Search is testing dynamic color themes for image results, but it’s not exactly Material You
Material Youand its dynamic coloring engine (dubbed “Monet”) are still very new to Android and app designers, and as such, there is a lot of experimentation going on. While most Google apps derive their colors from your wallpaper on Android 12, the theming engine can also be used for different purposes. Google Search’s image viewer could become one of these examples.9to5Googlehas spotted an a/b test that takes advantage of the Monet theming engine, deriving colors from the image result currently viewed instead of your phone’s wallpaper.
The new Monet-based theme comes with quite the reshuffled interface for image search results, but the gist is that the collection of related images and all other UI elements below the previewed result are dunked in a color derived from it, with different levels of brightness creating boxes and buttons. This makes for a more obvious connection between the image at the top and the rest of the page for each photo you view.
Other noteworthy changes to the image results include a more prominent Google Lens button in the bottom left corner, the website’s name and thumbnail in the top left corner, and a change that puts related images in a horizontally scrolling carousel instead of a regular scroll view.
Unfortunately, we’ve only got our eyes on what this theme looks like in dark mode in the Google app. Presumably, the Monet-based interface will also come to the mobile website and the light mode of the Google app. It might even make its way to the desktop version, which would be among the first Monet implementations on the big screen we’ve seen so far.
Google Search’s approach reminds us very much ofYouTube’s experiments with dynamic coloring, with the app dunking some results’ backgrounds in colors found in their thumbnails. While deriving colors from your phone’s wallpaper might make sense for static, more prominent UI elements like the search field or the bottom bar, this context-based coloring could look incredibly slick in apps that work with lots of different images and thumbnails.
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