Google has revealed that it is dropping Material Design from its iOS apps in favour of Apple’s own UIKit.
For the past decade or so, Google apps for iOS have used a Material Design custom UI that closely matches that of their Android equivalents, providing a certain unified Google experience regardless of platform.
However, as Apple’s own design language has evolved, this has left Google apps feeling oddly detached from the surrounding iOS experience.
With Apple’s UIKit improving sufficiently in recent versions, it seems Google is finally happy to mould its apps in a more Apple-like fashion. Google software designer Jeff Verkoeyen revealed the news via a series of tweets.
He claims that the decision to drop Material Design “has enabled us to marry the best of UIKit with the highlights of Google’s design language”.
Verkoeyen claims that by dropping Google’s custom code building custom code, the company is now able to “really make products feel great on Apple platforms”.
Future Google app updates during this iOS 15 era should see them falling into line with native iOS apps in terms of layout and UI positioning.
Of course, if you’re someone who switches between these two mobile platforms with some frequency, as many of the TrustedReviews team do, this news might not be quite so welcome. Still, the promise of an improvement to the layout and performance of iOS apps like YouTube and Google Maps certainly sounds appealing.
As MacRumors points out, Google has recently been hiring for its Apple development team, so it’s clearly pressing ahead with these more native-feeling iOS apps.