Here’s something we never thought would happen. Especially considering Facebook owns WhatsApp now. But the most popular messaging app out there, WhatsApp has now gone material. The update is available in the Play Store now, for some. But if you can’t wait to get the update, you can grab the APK from WhatsApp’s own site. Which is a pretty cool thing for them to do. It looks fantastic in material design, although you won’t see the full effect unless you’re using a Lollipop device. But the only real extra part of the design you’ll see on a Lollipop device is the tinted status bar.
Last year, at Google I/O material design was born. Matias Duarte took the stage at Moscone West to introduce Android L – at the time, it was later named Lollipop – which brought an entirely new design. And we all just fell in love with it. It’s called Material Design. We’ve seen plenty of apps integrate Material Design into their apps, even if it’s just a partial bake of the design language. But I’d have to say that WhatsApp is the first really big app that’s not owned by Google, to go full material. However, WhatsApp really needed it, they haven’t had a redesign in a very long time, other than going flat about a year ago.
In the past 6 months, WhatsApp has really been gaining ground with adding new features like VoIP calls, and the ability to use WhatsApp from your desktop. Now we have an entirely new UI. It appears that Facebook is doing the opposite of what we thought they’d do with WhatsApp, and that’s a great thing! WhatsApp is adding new features everyday to stay at the top of the messaging app food chain. And deservingly so.
This version of WhatsApp is 2.12.38, which you can download from the source link below. Just install like any other APK. Which means you’ll need to go into Settings > Security and make sure “Unknown Sources” is checked. Once that’s done, just open the file and install. Within a few seconds, your old version of WhatsApp will be replace with this new material design version.