This week, Android 12 Beta 2 was released, and it brought with it a slew of new features that we'd only seen in images before. This includes Android's ambitious color-changing UI nicknamed "Monet," and despite the fact that this is still a beta, Android 12's chameleon-like UI already feels like it lives up to the hype after some hands-on time.
Monet—or "Material You," as Google prefers—easily recolors your phone's UI with a matching theme based on your background. Choose a mostly blue wallpaper, and Android 12 will adjust the background colours of the buttons, sliders, clock, notifications, and settings to match. This setup appears to be unworkable outside of an onstage tech show, but the code is now available, and it actually works. I've spent the last day attempting to break it, and Android 12 consistently produces stunning colour schemes with no difficulties with contrast.
For a long time, Google has been working on wallpaper-defined colour schemes, beginning with Android 5.0 Lollipop and the "Palette" API in 2014. Monet is a second-generation version of the notion, and while the Palette API in Android 5 was scarcely used, Google now feels secure enough in the concept to deploy it almost everywhere. The systemwide colour coordinator affects all aspect of the Android 12 system UI except the permanently black Quick Settings backdrop.
A quick description of how Android 12 works in terms of the system UI is that it samples a single hue from your background and then produces a few colours by altering the brightness and saturation. Choose a green-ish wallpaper, and you'll receive a brilliant green, a dark green, a desaturated green, and a practically white green that will be scattered throughout the majority of the UI. When it comes to colour choices, the Media player notification takes on a life of its own, choosing a crazy complementary hue that is dependent on your wallpaper in some way.
If the Google I/O presentations are to be believed, Monet will be even better by the time it is released. A wallpaper picker was shown on one slide, which displayed several flavours of colour options derived from your wallpaper. So, by the time launch arrives, Google appears to want to give you the option to steer the colour choices in a specific way. When you initially apply a wallpaper, Monet may occasionally choose one colour scheme from it since it is a buggy beta. When you reboot, it will move to a different colour scheme, suggesting that there is still space for variation, just no controls.
The worst you can say about Monet right now is that it may not choose the accent colour hue you want or expect. You could want a red accent colour to bring everything together if you have a primarily black-and-white image with a striking red highlight someplace. However, Monet might not choose the hue you choose. Those controls sound like just what the system needs right now, if they really ship.
Monet is limited to the lock screen, system UI, home screen, and settings in Beta 2. However, Google demonstrated a color-changing calculator, a phone app, and a messaging app during I/O, all of which are expected to be constructed. (How could Google say no to a texting app?) The new widgets, which aren't yet available, will also use your preferred colour scheme on the home screen. Because we are unable to create a color-changing home screen at this time, the new lock screen—which displays a large clock when there are no notifications—is the greatest demonstration of Monet in action.
If app developers wish to hand over control of their designs to Monet, Android 12 provides many colour variables to plug into their code, which will be changed out anytime the wallpaper changes. The algorithm chooses three "Accent" colours and two "Neutral" colours for developers based on the wallpaper. They also get to choose a lightness value for each colour.
