Android 14 could liven up Material You with significantly bolder colors

Material You has been the face of Android UI design language since Android 12. While it looks great and all, the fact that it can’t always exactly match your background is a noticeable limitation. But Android 14 could have a fix for that problem.

According to 9to5Google, the Material Design team is working on a new theme style called “Fidelity.” This new theme style would introduce new significantly bolder colors to Material You.

As it exists right now, Material You tries its best to match UI color schemes with the colors of your wallpaper. However, it does this by translating primary colors into pastel colors, which often leads to pale and muted results. Fidelity will change this by offering a more vibrant color palette than what was available before.

Reportedly, the colors aren’t directly available in Android 14 yet. But the outlet found that the style is already available in part of Google’s open-source code. With it, they were able to create a simple demo app displaying what would be possible with Fidelity.

In the example above, there are two screenshots of the demo using the same base color. In the current version of Material You, it’s impossible to match this shade of red. As a result, Material You will instead use the soft red/pink shade you see in the right image. Fidelity, on the other hand, will be able to match the color accurately, as you see in the left image.

It’s unknown when Fidelity will be ready for the public. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about this feature during Google I/O. Google’s event is scheduled to take place on May 10.