Google has started updating the icons of three everyday Android apps: Google Messages, Phone by Google and Google Contacts. The new versions have a soft gradient and crisper edges, and they are arriving on phones gradually over the next few weeks.
Nothing inside the apps changes. This is only the picture on the home screen and in the app drawer, so there is nothing to set up.
What looks different
In its announcement, Google says the icons now carry a subtle but crisp gradient, with edges that are easier to read against a busy wallpaper. The curvature and colouring have also been adjusted to sit closer to the rest of Google’s apps and the redrawn Google logo.
In Google’s image of the set, each app keeps its familiar symbol: a handset for Phone by Google, a pair of overlapping speech bubbles for Messages and a person silhouette for Contacts. What is new is the shading, which runs from a deeper blue into a lilac tint on each shape.
Google says the redesign was shaped by user feedback and that the apps themselves stay the same. It does not say what that feedback was or which devices get the icons first.
The change follows a similar gradient treatment that Google gave its Workspace and Pixel apps earlier this year, as 9to5Google points out.
Because the rollout is staged, two people with the same phone may see different icons for a while. Google has not published a date by which every user will have them.
