The folks over at 9to5Google have been able to enable some additional design tweaks and a minor revamp to the settings interface in Gboard 10.9. These changes aren’t live on the public version of the Google keyboard yet but should soon. Firstly, Gboard is seemingly preparing a circular “Popup on keypress” that will replace the rectangular popup that appears currently. The underlying letter will also remain visible when this popup appears. The current iteration doesn’t show the letter you just pressed. Google is further adding a touch of roundness to a few other areas as well. According to the report, the “pill-shaped container that appears when you long-press on the ‘comma/emoji’ key to the left of the spacebar” now has a popup with rounded corners, and so does the symbols panel that appears when you long-press on the ‘period’ key. Apart from this, Gboard is preparing an interface redesign in settings. Pages now match the Android 12 Settings app, featuring a large header at the top. The ‘Theme’ page, in particular, is getting some additional tweaks. The layout is unchanged but Cards get rounded corners. The keyboard also highlights your selection with a checkmark and a colored boundary. The report says Gboard now “does a better job of emphasizing available themes”, while the ‘System Auto’ preview also makes it easier to understand what the theme does.
Gboard is preparing more design tweaks
Google has been making a lot of changes to Gboard lately. From the Material You redesign to settings revamp, the Google keyboard now looks quite different. It recently picked up a new menu in the settings that let you control emojis, stickers, and GIFs, all from the same place. Gboard 10.9 also added the ability to hide items such as addresses and phone numbers from the recently copied text strip at the top of the keyboard. It now seems to be preparing some design tweaks, both on the keyboard as well as the settings. As said earlier, Google has yet to publicly roll out these changes on Gboard. We will be keeping an eye on when they become available on the Google keyboard. Hopefully, with the next major update for the app. We’ll have to wait and see.
