The Gboard is undoubtedly one of the most popular and used virtual keyboards in the Android landscape. Over the last few months it has been updated, accepting the dictates of the Material You; The new design was initially exclusive to Google Pixels but is now starting to expand to other non-Pixel devices, including Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets updated to Android 12 using the new Gboard beta.
With Android 12, Google has largely changed the aesthetic appearance of its operating system through a new style called Material You: very generally, a color palette is extracted from the phone’s home background; these colors are then used within the operating system to characterize various elements of the user interface.
Samsung has not directly exploited the Material You for its One UI interface but has implemented (practically) the same function under the name Color Palette , integrating it into several of its applications.
With the latest beta of Gboard, Material You is no longer exclusive to Pixels
Without going around it, all Samsung Galaxy devices updated to Android 12 with One UI 4.0, whether they are smartphones or tablets, are starting to receive the elements of the Material You on the Google keyboard, as long as they have installed the latest beta of Gboard (version 11.5.05.427194903).
The aesthetic innovations impact visimaente on various aspects of the keyboard; as you can also see from the images below, the colors deriving from the background are present on the backspace, comma, period, Shift keys and on the symbol selector. There are also some circular buttons, another Material You dictate. This novelty also seems to be present in the “floating” and “one-handed” modes of the keyboard.
How to download the latest beta of Gboard
For those who have a Samsung device updated to Android 12 and want to try this colorful novelty brought by the latest Gboard beta, there are two ways to go:
- Sign up for the Beta Program of the app directly from the Google Play Store; in this case, simply reach the application page, click on “Join” in the “Join the beta program” section and, once the update is indicated, update the application.
- Download the specific APK package directly from the APKMirror portal (reachable at this link ) and proceed with the manual installation.