Android 12 dynamic color theming looks to expand beyond Pixels

There’s one company noticeably absent from the list.

What you need to know

• A new commit suggests that Material You dynamic theming will arrive on more devices.
• Each manufacturer may implement dynamic colors in their own way.
• Samsung is notably not on the list and will likely stick to its own system.

Love it or hate it, Material You in Android 12 brings a major visual overhaul to Android thanks in part to its dynamic color system. Now there appears to be evidence that the color system will arrive on more Android devices.

Mishaal Rahman noticed a code commit listed as “Add supporting manufacturer list of dynamic colors” that lists many Android OEMs that will support dynamic colors on some of the best Android phones. Among these manufacturers are OnePlus, Xiaomi, Nokia (by way of HMD Global), Sony, Oppo, and several more.

This is interesting. The source code for Monet (Android 12’s wallpaper-based theme system) will be released with Android 12L, but based on this code change for the Material Components library, it looks like a bunch of OEMs are implementing dynamic color support themselves. https://t.co/Oufh9zxDnZ pic.twitter.com/9obGYbbMDC

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) November 11, 2021

It’s a good sign that these manufacturers will implement dynamic colors for their devices. It was previously hinted that Material You might arrive on other Android devices as Google is reportedly open-sourcing its theming engine with Android 12L. However, what you see from these manufacturers may differ from what’s present on the Pixel 6. This is because OEMs will likely make their own tweaks to fit their respective Android skins.

As XDA-Developers notes, it’s a somewhat convoluted method that could create some havoc for developers as their apps won’t support dynamic colors for newly added OEMs unless they update their code.

There are some notable names not on this list, like LG. At this point, it’s unclear what LG has in store for its Android 12 update after it promised at least three years of OS upgrades for some of its most recent devices.

More importantly, Samsung is not on this list, even though we’ve seen the company using a color-theming system in One UI 4 beta. However, it seems Samsung is using its own implementation for Color Palette that differs from Google’s version.

We will have to wait and see what we get once stable Android 12 rolls out for other OEMs, which could be around the corner for some like Samsung.

Dynamic and colorful

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