Google shipped out a new Pixel Feature Drop last week that included at least 8 new features or improvements to your Pixel phone, foldable, or tablet. There are new features in Google Photos, Messages, within Magic Cue, and to notifications (summaries!). One of the more noteworthy of the bunch is in this new Pixel Themes app that first showed up on Google Play before Google ever made a public announcement. While it’s an idea that should excite us, the launch of it isn’t exactly the start we hoped for.
You see, Pixel Themes integrates into the “Wallpaper & style” area of your Pixel phone in order to provide a “complete refresh that updates your wallpaper, icons, sounds, GIFs, and more.” It basically adds full phone theme support in ways that other phones may have done in the past, yet Google has been hesitant to allow.
Once on your phone, there’s a new area called “Theme pack” that shows all available themes. You can tap on one to download it, hit a single button to “Apply” it, or customize the theme by wallpaper, color, app icons, clock, GIFs, sounds, and in Gboard. It’s a slick layout that lets you preview everything before activating it. Unfortunately, Google is kicking off Pixel Themes with a single theme pack that is an advertisement for a movie and not giving us any other themes to choose from.
As you all know now, Pixel Themes launched in the latest Feature Drop as a collaboration with the new “Wicked: For Good” film. You get choices of “For Good,” “Glinda,” and “Elphaba,” all of which have their own color styles, sounds, imagery, clocks, and more. On one level, this is a great way for Google to showcase the potential of Pixel Themes. However, this all really feels like a feature that should have had several non-collaboration themes in addition to this movie pairing.
Look, I’m not saying this because I have a problem with the “Wicked” movies. I saw the first one and it was fine. I’m sure I’ll see this new one at some point. But as someone who likes to customize their phone, I don’t typically do so with movie characters. Where’s a nature or mountain theme? What about something with cats? I like retro vibes here and there – what about that? Where’s the AI input box that’ll let me say, “Create a Pixel Theme with retro video game art, bleep-bloop noises and ringtones, and a clock with an Arcade font?”
Examples like this could all arrive down the road and I hope they do. I do worry a bit that Google has described this first release as “our first seasonal theme pack,” as if the idea going forward is a seasonal release schedule with more collaborations. Don’t do that, Google – give us stuff that won’t turn our phones into advertisements.
Google is always playing catch-up in customization and this is a big (first) step towards more personalization on Pixel phones. I’ll give them that.
Read the original post: Pixel Themes is a Great Idea That Kicked Off in the Worst Way
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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