While the first developer preview of a new version of Android typically shows us very little, in terms of changes. We are seeing a big change here in the first preview for Android 12, and it has to do with the Settings UI.
We’ve seen leaks that Google was working on a new look for Android 12, supposedly calling it “Material NEXT” and now we’re seeing some of those changes in Android 12 DP1.
According to XDA’s Mishaal Rahman, if you enable the “Silky Home” feature in the developer options, you will see an entirely new Settings UI. And honestly, it looks a lot like One UI.
It’s a work in progress
Like a lot of the changes we see in the first preview, this is also a work in progress. As you can see in the screenshots below, it is pretty uniform across the board. But the main settings UI still looks a lot like the older version in Android 11.
This means that this could be reverted before the final Android 12 release later this year, and then come back in Android 13 next year. We’ve seen that many times with changes and features Google has shown us in the first preview. There’s a reason why it is available in the developer settings anyways.
It does look really clean and it is likely meant to be used one-handed. Which is apparently going to be a big thing in Android 12. But it also looks a lot like One UI. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, One UI looks pretty clean. And OnePlus also took a page out of One UI’s book for its latest version of Oxygen OS too.
So don’t get your hopes up that this will be available in the final version of Android 12, but it is fairly likely to be coming. We’ll see.
