
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is constant its work to separate up Android’s notifications and Fast Settings panels.
- The media participant now seems on the high of the Fast Settings panel, and now you can change between pages by swiping.
- The brand new cut up notifications and Fast Settings panels aren’t stay but in Android 16 Beta 3, and we don’t know when this new design will roll out.
The third beta of Android 16 is lastly right here. Being the Platform Stability launch, Beta 3 will probably be very near the secure replace we’ll see in June. This implies no main adjustments are anticipated between from time to time, which is disappointing for these anticipating important design adjustments. Google will revamp Android’s consumer interface, although, and the newest beta contains a number of enhancements to the brand new cut up notifications and Fast Settings panels. Right here’s your newest have a look at Android’s upcoming notification and Fast Settings panel redesign.
You’re studying an Authority Insights story. Uncover Authority Insights for extra unique stories, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech protection you received’t discover wherever else.
Nevertheless, a number of weeks in the past, it grew to become obvious to us that this new design wouldn’t be prepared for Android 16. We got here to this conclusion as a result of presence of a number of unfinished features. For example, whereas Google is engaged on gentle mode compatibility, the panels nonetheless endure from important textual content distinction issues. The corporate can also be refining how sure Fast Settings tiles increase, however this implementation stays incomplete. Crucially, the media participant was nonetheless absent from the panels, and there was no intuitive solution to change between them.
With the newest code adjustments in Android 16 Beta 3, nonetheless, Google has addressed a number of of those points. The media participant is now prominently positioned on the high of the notifications and Fast Settings panels, and there at the moment are two new methods to modify between them. First, you may merely faucet the chips on the high left and proper to open the respective panels. Second, swiping down on the left facet opens the notifications panel, whereas swiping down on the correct opens the Fast Settings panel.
Personally, I discover the brand new swipe gesture unintuitive. Some folks will probably attempt to change between panels by swiping left or proper, as that’s how a number of different Android-based OSes with cut up panels function. Because of this, it’s potential some folks will wrestle to adapt to Google’s methodology.
In fact, this assumes that Google doesn’t make any additional adjustments, which is kind of potential given the cut up panel design remains to be in growth. Google will probably proceed to refine the brand new panels to not solely handle the problems I described earlier but additionally add new options. In Android 16 Beta 3, for instance, Google additionally made the Fast Settings panel vertically scrolling, permitting you to refill your complete display with tiles. It additionally added clear plus and minus buttons to every tile within the edit menu, making it simpler so as to add or take away tiles from the panel.
Whereas it’s not possible that Google will launch this new design within the preliminary Android 16 secure launch, it may nonetheless arrive later this 12 months in a quarterly replace for Android 16. We’ll proceed to watch future Android builds for any additional adjustments to Android’s notification and Fast Settings panels.