Switching accounts on Google sites isn’t as visually appealing as it could be, but the company has been working on that. Afteradding touches of Material Youto the interface back in January and creating a gesture for quicklyswitching between work and personal accountson Android recently, Google is back with another major change to its account switcher on the web.
You’ll find the account switcher in the upper-right corner of Google Search, Gmail, Docs, and other Google sites. As spotted by9to5Google, this interface now has an expandable UI with an extra smattering of Material You. It’s an account-based change and it’s still in the process of rolling out, but during testing, we found it was enabled on most of our accounts already.
The most evident change is the expanded dimensions of the account switcher – both the height and width have grown to make it more significant. The user’s presently active Google Account occupies a top-centered position, displaying the associated profile picture beneath the email address. Notably, the design of theManage your Google Accountbutton has evolved from a rounded rectangle to a pill-shaped element. Throughout the redesign, a slightly darker color palette contributes to a more refined appearance.
Beneath this account management feature, users can access a list of their additional Google accounts. you’re able to minimize this list with theHide more accountsbutton, at which point the UI becomes more compact than the old iteration. Sadly, this doesn’t persist across Google sites — if you open the account switcher on another Google platform, or even if you just refresh the current page, the list expands again.
One other noteworthy change is to the app launcher UI that you’ll find by selecting the grid icon just to the left of the account switcher button. The background of this popup is using the same darker color palette as the account switcher, and the corners have been more drastically rounded.
