A tall bottom bar is one of Material You’s most obvious features. However, Google’s apps are starting to look different, with the Play Store switching to a shorter version.
The container and pill-shaped tab indicator are shorter on Google Play’s new short bottom bar. This server-side change began to gradually increase availability last month, but it has not yet been fully implemented.
The only real change in functionality is a slightly smaller touch target. You don’t get to see genuinely more perhaps a line of text on your screen because of this superficial change.
Rather, it’s a question of consistency about Material 3 and first-party Google applications. While Google Tasks received a tall app bar in February, Google Voice is the most recent Android application to receive a Material You redesign.
Gmail serves as a model for breaking specifications. Gmail for Android switched to a shorter M3 bottom bar with the same height as the M2 version following the widespread rollout of the Material You redesign in September 2021. The text labels were removed from Gmail a year later in favor of a shorter navigation element.
In the meantime, the main, music, and TV YouTube apps never adopted Material You or the new bottom bar style.
The taller base bar as it matches the Material You stylish of greater touch targets and more space. After almost two years of Material 3, the shorter element appears slightly off.