Phone by Google shrinking bottom bar to match Material 3 Expressive

Besides announcing Call Reason this week, Phone by Google is testing a shorter bottom bar to comply with Material 3 Expressive.

When the dialer got its M3 Expressive redesign that thoroughly overhauled the app’s navigation, the tall bottom bar from Google’s previous design guidance was retained. 

Beta version 202.0.838486605 of Phone by Google switches to the new navigation bar size. There’s a server-side component to this change, so this is not widely available in the preview program. 

Meanwhile, Google has made the pill-shaped tab indicator slightly narrower and changed the label’s text color.

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This is a small change that does not significantly show any more content or impact touch targets, but the consistency is needed across Google’s first-party apps.

Old vs. new

The majority of Google apps have been updated to the shorter size (which was the M2 height), but there are some prominent exceptions:

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