Android 13 Beta 1 just quadrupled its Material You theme options
Fans of Material You and Android’s snazzy new dynamic theming system will be excited to note that theAndroid 13 Beta 1release finally includes the long-leaked and previously hidden new color options, letting you pick between more muted or vibrant tones. There are sixteen color options now available.
Although there aren’t any names attached to the new colors in the “wallpaper & style” menu, they appear to bethe same color combinations we exclusively reported were coming to Android 13back in January andappeared in a hidden statewith Android 13 DP2. That means you still have the same four “base” Material You colors dynamically generated based on your background, but that is now augmented with multiple new variants. There are three we were previously familiar with:
But joining the colors we were familiar with are two extra pages of “RAINBOW” and “FRUIT_SALAD” options, named thusly according to esper.io’s Mishaal Rahman. (We originally assumed the four pages were just the original colorways each modified by the three options from before for 4x4=16, but it turns out there are evenmoreoptions with their own logic.)
The technical details might vary slightly, but based on what was previously revealed about this feature and how it currently looks, the pattern for these different themes seems to hold true now that they’ve been released. Including the original four colorways, that means you now have sixteen total options as of Android 13 Beta 1.
Left: Android 13 DP1.Right: Android 13 Beta 1. Note that the “wallpaper colors” list is side-scrolling with sixteen total options now, compared to four before.
The Material You color widget is bugging out for me on Android 13 Beta 1, or I’d show you what each color pallette looks like together with the base theme in a handful of examples, but the combinations and their differences have been previously documented:
Color palette variations for the original (far left) and three modified dynamic themes as of a prior release.
Google’s James O’Leary, one of the architects behind Material You, previouslytold us how these colors are determinedbased on some fancy math and a custom color space Google createdjust for this. Although we couldn’t discuss upcoming features at the time, these new themes almost certainly work similarly.
If you’d like to check the new themes out for yourself,installing Android 13 Betasis an easier proposition than the Developer Previews were. And if you want to see everything else that’s changed, we’ve documentedall of the new features live in Android 13for your later perusal.
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