Tushar Mehta / Android Authority
TL;DR The altest Gboard beta is showing new Expressive settings UI and updated emoji tab colors.
These features largely match redesigns we previously spotted in testing, though there has been at least one change between then and now.
The new UI is currently only available on Android 16 devices running the latest beta version.
As Google continues to refine its features, the Gboard is now beginning to introduce some of the visual changes we’ve been waiting for. In version 16.5.1.838613058-beta-arm64-v8a, users of the latest Gboard beta are seeing Google’s refreshed Expressive settings UI and the subtle color updates to the emoji picker tabs.
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By playing around in previous builds of the app, we first spotted Gboard’s Material 3 Expressive redesign and the in-progress color tweaks for the emoji picker during earlier stages of testing. In this new build, the emoji tab bar has been refined again since we first saw it.
In the first image above, you can see the emoji picker as it currently appears, and how it was tested at the time. In the second image, you can see how the selected tab now appears in the new beta, looking noticeably rounder than in the test version.
The bigger addition is the new Material 3 Expressive settings UI. As expected from our previous investigation, it revamps the menus to align with Google’s updated design direction. The images below show how it looks in the latest beta version.
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