Android 16’s first quarterly release brings the biggest visual shift to the platform since Material You, rolling out a new “Material 3 Expressive” look to Pixel phones. It’s bolder, rounder, and purposefully more colorful, with redesigned icons and resizable Quick Settings tiles that reframe how you interact with core controls. Love it or not, it’s a statement from Google—and we want to know what you think.
What is Material 3 Expressive?
Think of Expressive as a more confident take on Material 3. It doubles down on dynamic color and shape language: beefier corner radii, higher-contrast surfaces, and iconography with stronger silhouettes. The Material Design team has talked for years about “expressiveness through color and motion,” and this release pushes that principle into system UI elements you see dozens of times a day.
Under the hood, dynamic color mapping still pulls hues from your wallpaper, but tones trend toward higher chroma with more consistent contrast across light and dark modes. That should reduce the washed-out pastels some users disliked in early Material You iterations, while better aligning with accessibility guidance from WCAG on minimum contrast.
What’s changed in daily use
The Quick Settings shade is the headline act. Tiles are now resizable, letting you promote essentials like Wi‑Fi or Bluetooth to larger targets while shrinking rarely used toggles. The grid breathes a bit more, and the brightness slider and header adopt a stronger visual hierarchy so the most important actions sit where your thumb naturally lands.
System icons—especially battery, Wi‑Fi, and connectivity—shift to a filled, high-contrast style. Fans will say these are clearer at a glance; critics will call them a little too iOS. Either way, they’re easier to parse in bright light and better for quick scanning, which matters if you constantly hop between home and the notification shade.
Animations also feel more intentional. Transitions between lock screen, shade, and apps have subtler easing and tighter timings, reducing visual jitter. It’s the kind of change you only notice when you go back to an older build and something suddenly feels “off.”
While the focus is on look and feel, the update lands alongside functional perks like early desktop mode improvements and Auracast support on recent Pixels. Those features aren’t part of Expressive itself but underscore how much of the platform’s polish is happening in these quarterly drops.
Design intent and usability
From a UX perspective, the larger touch targets and clearer layering are wins. Fitts’s Law tells us bigger, closer targets are faster to hit, and the updated tiles reflect that. The elevated cards and shadows help separate interactive elements from background chrome, a long-standing Material principle that reduces mis-taps.
Color is doing more work too. According to Google’s Material guidance, the latest dynamic color system prefers tone pairs that sustain a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text and stronger contrasts for key icons. In practical terms: text on tiles and key toggles should be more readable across more wallpapers, not just Google’s curated ones.
How apps and skins might adapt
For developers who rely on the Material 3 libraries, Expressive should arrive mostly “for free” once dependencies are updated, thanks to refreshed tokens and defaults. Apps with heavy custom theming may need to revisit icon weights, elevation, and color roles to avoid clashing with the system’s stronger shapes.
OEMs will have choices to make. Interfaces like One UI and HyperOS already sit on top of Material conventions; adopting Expressive’s iconography and tile behavior could improve coherence, but expect manufacturers to keep signature twists. The big test will be whether third-party tiles and widgets embrace the resizable paradigm quickly so users get a consistent feel.
Early reactions: split but engaged
Community feedback so far is mixed in the best possible way: engaged, specific, and fixated on details. On forums and social channels, many applaud the resizable tiles for cutting friction, while others worry the heavier icon set drifts too close to competing platforms. UX researchers at organizations like Nielsen Norman Group have long noted that recognizable, high-contrast icons improve wayfinding—Expressive leans into that, even if the aesthetic is polarizing.
Have your say
So where do you land on Material 3 Expressive in Android 16—refreshing and modern, or a step too far? Cast your vote in our poll and tell us why. If you’ve already lived with the update on a Pixel, we’re especially keen to hear how the new Quick Settings, icon set, and dynamic color hold up in real life. Your feedback will shape how we cover the rollout and the tweaks Google should prioritize next.