Techunim: Google Translate's Material You UI overhaul is coming along quickly

As Google gets ready to release the final version of Android 12, we've seen a constantly increasing number of Google apps getting Material You overhauls, including Google Clock, Google Calculator, and Google's Phone app. Even more apps that haven't received their respective revamp yet will have one coming soon. Last month, we learned that Google was working on a Material You UI overhaul of Google Translate. Back then, it looked good but fairly rough and unfinished. The redesign is still not available, but new screenshots have surfaced today, showing that the new Google Translate design is quickly coming into shape.

The redesigned main UI view in Google Translate. Image credits: 9to5Google

While the redesign was first uncovered by XDA-Developers, the folks at 9to5Google just revisited it a couple of versions later, on version 6.23, and it already looks so much better. The UI is now drawing colors from your device's wallpaper, just like other Material You UI elements in Android 12 do. One-handed usability is clearly a priority in this redesign, as the most important buttons have been moved to the bottom within your thumb's reach. Dynamic theming is now also present in the Conversations view (that allows users to speak to one another in different languages with Translate acting as a middleman) as well as the Camera, and it extends into the language list as well.

The Camera, Conversation, and language list views.

Some features of the app, such as the phrasebook (as well as some settings and setup pages), are still unfinished because this is, after all, a work in progress. In a similar fashion, a lot of other features and elements, like the recent translation history, appear to be missing entirely. So far, though, it seems much closer to being finalized than what we saw last time.

A redesign for this app is long overdue: while it has received a handful of minor changes, the overall UI has remained the same since even before Android Pie and Material Theming were released — and that was in 2018.

The revamped app is not yet actually accessible, even as a manual download, nor even for Pixel users. However, as we get closer to the final release of Android 12, and given how it's quickly advancing, we're expecting to see it rolling out either shortly before or shortly after that.