GoKawiilTL;DR The Google Sheets icon has been updated on iOS.
The new icon is the same as the old one, but rotated 180 degrees. This orientation better resembles an actual spreadsheet.
We’re speculating the previous version’s orientation was an oversight, but Google hasn’t confirmed that.
Google set out to modernize its app iconography this year, introducing new icons for a number of services, with soft, rounded shapes and a generous helping of color gradients. Today, one of those icons got yet another update, and it’s kind of a strange one.
As flagged by 9to5Google, the icon for Google Sheets on Android has been flipped upside-down. No other changes were made to the icon’s shape or colors; it’s just the orientation that’s changed.
Here’s the old icon (left) next to the updated version (right):
Now that the icon’s been rotated 180 degrees, it does look more like a stylized spreadsheet, with lines along the top and left edges that evoke the row of letters that label columns and the and column of numbers that label rows. The small strip now protruding from the right edge of the icon also reads better as a second worksheet, which, in Sheets and apps like it, would be accessed by clicking on a tab to the right of the first one.
Given how much more closely the icon resembles a spreadsheet now that it’s been rotated, it seems possible (and perhaps even likely) that the icon’s previous orientation was simply a mistake. Google hasn’t responded to Android Authority‘s request for comment — and given how minor this development is, I don’t anticipate that it will.
9to5 clocked the updated Sheets icon on iOS. As of publication, I’m still seeing the old version on Android and the Sheets web app.
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