What’s new

April 2017

Significant updates

• Updated guidance on the Material Design color system, usability, and a brand new Color Tool for creating color palettes and testing accessibility.
• Text fields expands on usage basics and introduces text field boxes for increasing text field discoverability.
• Bidirectionality has added resource links to developer guidance on right-to-left (RTL) icons.

December 2016

New sections

• Platforms discusses when and how to adapt apps to Material Design, and when to adhere to platform conventions.
• App shortcut icons contains specs on how to create app shortcut icons for the home screen.
• Help and feedback describes how to indicate, craft, and place help content.

Significant updates

• Bidirectionality has updated guidance on mirroring UI content and icons in right-to-left (RTL) languages.
• Accessibility contains new guidance on sound, controls, labeling elements, and testing.
• Selection includes detailed examples on item selection, toggling, and styling.

August 2016

New sections

• Notifications have been revised for Android N, including new content areas, interactions, user controls, and short text input.
• Widgets contains guidance on user engagement, retention, and acquisition.
• Confirmation and acknowledgement covers when and how to acknowledge user actions.

Significant updates

• Navigation now includes details on how to use the Up and Back buttons as part of your navigation strategy.
• Using full-screen mode for Lean Back, Immersive mode, and Lights out interactions.

May 2016

New sections

• Motion includes detailed examples and specs on material motion principles, duration and easing, transformations, choreography, and customization.
• Growth & communications contains guidance on user engagement, retention, and acquisition.
• Expansion panels guidance describes lightweight containers used for creating flows and editing content.

March 2016

New sections

• Bottom navigation bars allow switching between top-level views.
• Split screens allow the display of two activities at once (Android only).

Significant updates

• Expanded accessibility guidance on color and contrast, sound, motion, hierarchy and more.
• How to display password input on text fields.

February 2016

Significant updates

• Expanded guidance on customizing your app’s color palette, with more examples.
• Color specs for dialog errors, text selection, and text field labels.
• Sticker sheets now include text field colors, month and time pickers, and bottom toolbars (for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch).

December 2015

Significant updates

• Responsive UI includes a pattern on positioning and more examples of responsive patterns.
• Text fields adds guidance on required text fields.
• Whiteframes have been added for Sketch.
• Punctuation has new guidance on en dashes and parentheses.

October 2015

New sections

• Steppers describes how different types of steppers convey progress through numbered steps.

Significant updates

• Chips adds guidance on chip movement and deletion.
• Notifications includes formatting guidance for timestamps.

September 2015

Significant updates

• Navigation adds guidance on navigation hierarchy and structure, new navigation patterns, and combined navigation patterns.
• UI color application describes how transparent text maintains legibility against different background colors.
• Buttons contains guidance on toggle buttons and flat button behaviors.
• Tabs includes guidance on text sizing in tabs.

August 2015

New sections

• Permissions contains guidance on permissions groups, runtime permissions, request patterns, and how to address permissions when they are denied.

Significant updates

• Bottom sheets includes descriptions of persistent and modal bottom sheets, alternative display options, and desktop and tablet display using increments.
• Settings includes a usage overview.

July 2015

New sections

• Notifications contains guidance for tailoring notifications to users, including peeking notifications.
• Fingerprint contains guidance on implementing Fingerprint as an authentication option.

Significant updates

• Cards includes more image examples of card UI controls, sliders, and tabs.
• Launch screens includes guidance for implementing placeholder UIs.
• Settings includes additional guidance for labels and secondary text.

May 2015

New sections

• Adaptive UI includes responsive layout guidance, grids, breakpoints, and patterns.
• Empty states contains guidance for states when regular content can’t be shown.
• Launch screens includes branding and placeholder UI content.
• Navigation

Significant updates

• Elevation and shadows has been renamed from “Objects in 3D space,” adding new details about elevation changes.
• Authentic motion describes easing terms in more detail.

April 2015

New sections

• Data tables
• Units and measurements
• Floating Action Button has been moved into its own section, adding new details about behavior and transitions.
• App structure
• Component sticker sheet for Adobe After Effects.
• Data truncation and redaction
• Writing guidelines for Settings.

Significant updates

• Typography adds further guidance on style and line height for dense and tall languages.
• Cards includes more specs for laying out actions and content.
• Dialogs contains additional layout guidance.
• Tabs adds guidance around label content and more complete sizing specs.
• Scrolling techniques adds guidance for overlapping content.