Google tweaking Nearby Share with a touch of Material You [Gallery]

The other change Google is making to Nearby Share are UI tweaks that infuse Material You to the main sheet you interact with.

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

When you initiate Nearby Shares, a sheet slides up that starts the process of “Looking for nearby devices.” Google previously used a left-to-right wave to note this was occurring. It was a subtle element that got the point across. A small Nearby Share redesign will leverage various Material You shapes that expand and then fade out behind your profile avatar.

Text on this panel is also now slightly larger and centered, while the Nearby Share icon makes an appearance at the top. Google has also revamped the share previews to be larger and now houses them in a card with icons, doing a better job of noting what’s being shared. Image previews will also be available.

This small redesign to Nearby Share that we enabled is not yet rolled out and will presumably go live following a server-side update with the latest version of Google Play services.

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, from which some APK Insight teardowns benefit.

Dylan Roussel contributed to this article.