Google testing a colorless shapeless Play Store redesign with large Install button

You know those beautiful bold colors that were supposed to make out Material Design? Yup, we've been kissing them goodbye for a long time now and it looks like they might be stripped away from one more app on your phone: the Play Store.

A couple of users have started seeing a new Play Store interface that takes away the green title and notification bar, replaces them with a white one. It also takes away the green background behind the What's new section for changelogs and replaces it with white. It also takes away the grey background behind your rating/review of an app and... you guessed it... replaces it with white. The only real addition of color is a larger green Install button.

There are plenty of other changes to the interface too, like the disappearance of cards for the similar apps and recommendations, the wider text column for reviews, and some font differences, as well as a mysterious lack of round indicators for download numbers, categories, and review score. The latter could be a sign that this UI is still in development though, because you can see the empty space where they should be... unless Google turned them completely white. I kid, I kid. Partially.

Below are a series of screenshots of the current interface I see on my device (left) and what shows up on the new design (right). So you can feast your eyes on the disappearance of color and shape.

 

This does seem to be a limited server-side test so let's hope it doesn't roll out to all users before someone in the design team figures out how to add a bit of color or texture back.

Alternate title: #FFFFFFor life!