Google’s New Gradient Icon Design Will Be Used for More Apps
Google has been gradually rolling out new icon designs featuring a gradient style since the end of 2025. This visual language is now expanding to more of its own applications. 9to5Google has obtained images of the new icons, which no longer use the previous uniform circular base scheme—the old scheme attempted to fit Google’s iconic full color palette into a circular frame—but instead turns to a softer and more diverse expression.
Overall, the new icons have more rounded corners and smoother color transitions, with the gradient effect transitioning naturally from pastel shades to Google’s higher saturation primary colors. In fact, this new design language has already appeared in the new Google “G” logo, as well as products like Gemini, Google Photos, and Google Maps. According to 9to5Google, this change is also seen as a manifestation of Google strengthening the presence of artificial intelligence features in its products.
The report believes that these new icons are more lively, more vivid, and more varied in style, echoing the recent design trend of retreating from “flat minimalism.” Compared to the relatively simple and flat visual schemes popular in the late 2010s and early 2020s, Google is clearly pushing for a more layered and recognizable interface image.
Specifically, products such as Google Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and Keep have abandoned the previous “portrait paper” icon shapes, with many of the new icons adopting a horizontal layout. The article points out that this change is actually more in line with the actual use scenarios of these applications, especially since presentation tools are inherently more suitable for horizontal display than the previous visual hint of a vertical document.
Most of the icons in this round of updates can be considered improvements, not only making them easier to distinguish from each other, but also with many icons beginning to highlight a single dominant color. For example, the Google Chat icon has been changed from the original four-color bordered speech bubble to a green main body with a smiling element inside, which overall evokes the feeling of the early Google Hangouts icon. However, the article author also mentioned that the new Keep icon is an exception, which he believes looks terrible.
As for when these new icons will be officially pushed to users on a large scale, the report points out that there is currently no clear timeline, but considering that the related designs have already appeared on multiple products, a full launch is likely not to keep users waiting too long.