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(Pocket-lint) – Google’s most drastic user-interface overhaul since 2014 has been unveiled. Android 12‘s radical design change is no longer just the stuff of rumours.
As previous leaks have suggested, there’s a major change in how widgets are presented and customised. But more than that, the entire interface of each menu, layer and stock app has been redesigned.
Google has said that – as well as rethinking the colours, shapes, light and motion – it has built in features to give you more transparency on which apps are accessing which bits of the phone’s data. It’ll also give you more control over how much of that data is shared.
Design
Android 12 will allow users to customise practically every element of the user interface. Google calls it ‘Material You’.
You can choose colour pallettes; selecting background colours, accents and adjust the stroke and text thickness and contrast. What’s more, it’s applied to not just the phone UI but all the stock Google apps as well.
One feature allows you to automatically create a custom theme based purely on the main colours of your home screen wallpaper.
The quick settings drop-down shade has been completely redesigned to include more useful toggles and controls for things like Google Pay and Home controls too.
Privacy
To keep your information safe there’s a new privacy dashboard. It reports on all the apps on your phone, giving you easy access to see which apps have accessed which permissions.
For your location – when an app requests access – you can even choose to have only an approximate location shared, rather than a precise location.
In the drop down shade there are even controls for switching off your mic and camera, so no app can access them while they’re blocked.
Better together?
No, not the Jack Johnson song. Google’s latest Android vision will see it play more nicely with other Google-powered devices. Whether that be your Chromebook or Android TV set.
You can sign into your Chromebook using your phone and read messages on your laptop screen already, but with the latest update you’ll even be able to access recent photos taken on your phone.
As for your TV, you’ll be able to use your phone as a remote – similar to the iPhone’s Remote capability for Apple TV – where you can use your touchscreen as a trackpad or use the keyboard for typing.
Android 12 beta 1 will be available from today for the public to download and test on their devices.
You can get a sneak peak at the changes in the video posted to the official Android channel below:
Writing by Cam Bunton.
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