I tried the new Google Photos Android app redesign, and now I want it in every Google app

This week, Google’s been widely rolling out a bit of an interesting design tweak in Google Photos on Android. The app’s navigation bar — the strip near the bottom of the screen that gives users quick access to important destinations throughout the app — has been updated, replacing the familiar ribbon-style bar with a floating pill shape, plus a separate circular button to access the app’s search functionality.

It’s not an especially major change, but I do think it’s a good one, making Photos look more modern and providing a more predictable navigation experience. After seeing the new navigation bar in Photos, I’m convinced it’d be an improvement in most of Google’s apps.

I like this navigation bar better

The new nav bar is an improvement in a few ways. For one, it’s smaller. Compared to the old version, the new pill-shaped bar saves a lot of screen real estate by shaving off large chunks of empty space, now showing the app’s content below and beside the bar.

Photos’ three main views, Photos, Collections, and Create, are all grouped together inside the main pill-shaped nav bar. As you cycle through the three views, the UI near the top of the app stays consistent, and the nav bar remains fixed, while the content between the two fades in and out. A detached, circular search button lives to the right of the pill; tapping it slides in the search view (which doesn’t include any of the UI from the other views) from the right edge of the screen. It all feels logical and satisfying to move through.

This more modern type of navigation bar is also popping up in non-Google apps. Oura switched from a ribbon-style nav bar to a floating pill late last year, and Proton Mail puts message controls in a fixed-position pill-shaped container at the bottom of the screen (though that’s not a navigation bar). Those are just examples on my own phone; there must be plenty more, too.

Photos is pretty unique among Google’s portfolio, though. Most of the company’s apps, at least the ones I interact with, are still using ribbon-style nav bars. Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Maps, the Play Store — they’re still using the older version Photos just moved away from.

This goes against Material 3 Expressive guidelines

Google might be sticking primarily to the tried-and-true nav bar design because the new version in Photos doesn’t line up with Google’s own Material 3 Expressive guidance. Google updated its Material 3 guide on navigation bars for Material 3 Expressive last year, and the major changes it mentioned at the time were ensuring nav bars were flexible to work better on foldables and tablets, and making them a little shorter.

Funny enough, the only other two Google apps on my phone that have the newer pill-style nav bar, Files and Wallet, break another of Google’s stated guidelines: each of those apps’ nav bars only leads to two in-app destinations. Google says nav bars should include three to five options.

In any case, I like the new pill-shaped version Photos has now: it’s less obtrusive and more intuitive. Hopefully, we’ll see wider adoption with an update to Material 3 Expressive, which could theoretically come as soon as Android 18 next year.