With the arrival of MIUI 13 and Android 12, even Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones are starting to be tinged with Material You. One of the main novelties of Google’s major update is the redesign of its interface. But as often happens, one thing is Android for how it looks on the Pixel series, one thing is how it looks on other manufacturers’ smartphones.
Whether we are talking about Xiaomi, OPPO, OnePlus, Samsung and so on, each reality has its own interface and therefore its customization mechanics. This is also why the advent of Android 12 did not mean compatibility with the Material You system for everyone. For example, in my video review of MIUI 13, you can see how this aesthetic novelty is missing.
Google introduces the Material You: Which apps support it with Xiaomi and Android 12
However, other manufacturers besides Google are also running for cover to embrace the Material You of Android 12. For example, Samsung, OPPO and Realme have developed their own version of Material You on their respective One UI 4.0, ColorOS 12 and Realme UI 3.0.
Something is also doing Xiaomi, which with the latest update of the MIUI 13 Beta has added support to monet, that is, that element of Android 12 that enables Material You. And since I have updated my POCO F3 to the Beta, I decided to explain how it works on MIUI 13.
Material You: how it works and which apps support it
As anticipated, one of the main novelties of Android 12 is the Material You, which is the new aesthetic language that has succeeded the Material Design. As the word “You” suggests, the focus is on giving the user the ability to color the interface with the colors they prefer. This is done by drawing from the background you are using: based on the colors it contains, the system uses them to tint the elements of the UI and system apps.
This applies to Android 12 on the Google Pixel 6, where Android is in its purest stock form. The situation on Xiaomi’s MIUI 13 is quite different, as well as on all other proprietary interfaces. For the moment, an option like those of Samsung and OPPO is missing, so it is not possible to manually choose the background colors with which to color the interface.
On the contrary, with the MIUI 13 Beta from version 22.1.19 onwards, on Xiaomi smartphones, it is only supported by Google apps. So let’s see which apps are compatible with Material You and see how they change in practice:
- Phone
- Contacts
- Messages
- Gmail
- Duo
- Chrome
- Papers
- Drive
- Sheets
- Photo
- Meet (Workspace)
- Keep notes
- Calculator
- Calendar
- Clock
- Recorder
Here’s how they change based on two example backgrounds:
Blue & purple background
Yellow & Orange Background
According to the Google app you are using, the coloring effect of the Material You applied by MIUI 13 is more or less evident. In this respect, the app that gives its best is undoubtedly the Calculator. Others are missing such as Gboard, Play Store and so on, which could be added in the future.