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According to a new report, Facebook is planning to alter the design of the Facebook app again. This time around, the company seems to be planning to make the app’s design even whiter than it is right now.
This move probably has everything to do with Google’s Material Design guidelines in Android 9 Pie, as the Mountain View giant has been removing color from its applications for quite some time now. Let’s take Google Keep (aka Keep Notes) as an example, that app combined yellow and white colors, it had yellow accents, and its main header was yellow, but Google decided to remove the vast majority of that from the app. Same happened to Gmail in the new design as well, there are some colored accents in the app, but the red color was removed from the main header, and from a number of other places within the app.
Based on the information provided by XDA, which includes images, Facebook is looking to do something similar to Google. At the moment, the main header in Facebook’s application is blue, as is the status bar when you open the app (depending on your phone), but that will all change soon. The status bar will default to the standard color, while the main header will become completely white, well, its background will.
The navigation tabs below the main header will accommodate two more shortcut icons, for videos and profile view. Dark mode for the Facebook app is nowhere to be seen, though, at least for now. Google had already released dark mode for a number of its apps, including YouTube, Phone, Contacts… and the dark mode is even available in Chrome Canary, though it’s still buggy. The company is expected to release dark mode to a number of additional apps moving forward, Gmail will hopefully make the list.
Having said that, Facebook did release dark mode for the Messenger app quite recently, that option is still in beta, but it was extremely stable during our testing, which probably means it’s almost ready to go. Activating dark mode in Facebook Messenger isn’t exactly as easy as navigating to the settings, you will need to use an emoji in order to do it, click here for more information.
Facebook did not mention anything about the dark mode in its application, but considering that the app’s design is about to become whiter than ever, releasing dark mode for the app would definitely make sense, in order to contrast all that whiteness. On top of that, OLED displays are consuming less power when dark elements are on the display, and considering that Facebook’s application is one of the main offenders when it comes to battery consumption, a dark mode would certainly be a considerable improvement.
Facebook did not exactly follow Google’s Material Design guidelines with its Messenger app, Facebook’s main app is not exactly in line either, even though it’s closer than Messenger, so it’s a bit surprising the company opted to make both applications white to Google’s initiative. In any case, if you’d like to check out what will Facebook’s main app soon look like, screenshots are included down below. We still do not know when will you receive this update, but the change is being tested through a server-side switch as we speak, for some users.
Old UI:
New UI:
