Screenshots Leak Of Gmail’s Upcoming Design Change

- April 12, 2018

Screenshots have leaked of Gmail's upcoming design change. On April 11 it was confirmed that Gmail on the web would be going through some design changes in the near future as part of an experience that Google is looking to put out there for users. Part of this experience will be an early adopter program and a fresh new look for the Gmail web interface. The screenshots below, which originally surfaced early evening on April 11, showcase what some of that redesign will look like, complete with showings of some of the new features that are coming along with the Gmail web update.

Naturally Gmail isn't just going through some visual changes as Google will be incorporating some new features to the desktop version of the service. These aren't completely new features to Gmail as they are available on Android through the Gmail app, but this will be the first time some of them are hitting the desktop web client. As suspected there is quite a bit of material design. Many layers have more depth than before – you might notice this first with the 'compose' button, which instead of flat red rectangle with slightly rounded corners is now a pill-shaped white button that looks a lot like a floating action button, only longer. All of the actions in the menu that sits on the left side also now have icons accompanying them just like they do in the mobile app.

One of the upcoming new features will be smart reply, which is shown in the image above. Though options will obviously not be the same every time as they're meant to be relevant responses to the initial email, the above examples give an idea of what the feature will look like. Should your response not actually warrant a long, drawn-out reply, you can simply hit one of the buttons for a short and sweet response to get the point across. It also looks like Gmail will have a few different views that you can pick for how the inbox looks. These views will be listed as default, which will be the view that everyone sees upon the new change being rolled out, as well as options for a comfortable view and a compact view. The differences between the three options will afford the user to consolidate each box surrounding an individual email to a smaller space, though this will also limit each box to just a little bit of information. For instance, the default view is the only view that will show previews of things like attached documents and image files while the other views will be limited to just some of the details about the email like the subject and who the email is from. Users should notice a significant increase in color and vibrancy, too. While the majority of the interface will still be draped in white, the added depth from the implementation of material design along with the additional color splashes from icons will make things stand out more. Keeping all of this in mind, it's still likely going to be a little while before Google pushes things out as it still has to launch the early adopter program where people will get to test this new look.