Google Drive started rolling out Material 3 Expressive earlier this month, with the redesign’s wider availability accompanied by a few more components.
Most of the Google Drive Material 3 Expressive redesign elements are now widely rolled out. This includes the search app bar with a thicker field, and short bottom bar.
A FAB menu replaces the bottom sheet: Folder, Upload, Scan, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. Officially, the M3E guidelines say you can “show 2–6 related actions floating on screen,” but this makes for a really tall interface compared to the old 3×2 grid. It’s not ideal for one-handed usage.
How the pills animate in/out is nice and feels quite expressive. Meanwhile, it’s a bit strange to have two camera shortcuts given the second/stacked floating action button just above it.
Meanwhile, there are two sets of containers for list views, with this update not yet widely rolled out (the full-width version is unchanged from before). It’s hard to notice, but there’s one large rounded container between the search and bottom bar, which exist on the same background layer. Google then takes things a step further by placing each list item in its own container.
Another change that hasn’t widely rolled out is the button group in the top-right to switch between the list and grid view.
Of the apps I use daily, Google Drive might have the most Material 3 Expressive. It certainly feels like the biggest adjustment. Again, the FAB menu is pushing things at effectively seven items, while the individual containers for each file look a bit busy to my eye.
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