Android 16 Will Bring This Big Customization Feature to Pixels

At the beginning of my Android journey, I was really into launchers. There weren't that many built-in customization options back then, so making your device's UI look very different wasn't always possible. However, as time went on, more Android OEMs began to include customization and theming options (and the UIs simply started looking nicer).

While you can do a little bit to spice up how your Google Pixel's UI looks, you have to do everything in multiple steps. It'd be nice to have a one-click way to refresh your phone's look, like with themes. Samsung has a theme store full of all sorts of custom looks, and with Android 16, it looks like Google might finally bring that to its devices.

Android 16 Will Seemingly Bring Pixel Themes to Google's Smartphones

The strongest weapon that Pixels have is their software. Google arguably pays more attention to the software than any other Android OEM. However, one place where Google could work a little harder to match the competition is in its customization options. Here's a little timeline of some major visual customization options that Pixels have seen:

• 2019: System-wide dark theming
• 2021: Material You, with dynamic color theming
• 2022: Home screen icons could adopt color theming
• 2023: Improved lock screen customization

Yet, through all of this, general themes have been absent. It seems that the search-giant-turned-tech-giant knows that, and with Android 16, will bring Pixel Themes, a feature that is going to make changing the look of your UI so much easier. This feature will plug up one major gap that Google had relative to other OEMs.

This information comes from the people at Android Authority, who did a dive into the code of the Android 16 QPR1 Beta 1. In there, they find code strings that refer to “Themes” and “Pixel Themes”, and with the right moves, they were even able to activate the dormant code to make it show up in the UI. Of course, it doesn't work at the moment, but it does show what Google has cooking up behind the scenes.

Theme Store or Presets? Only Time Will Tell

One part of the puzzle has been revealed, and that's that Google is planning to introduce themes to its Pixel smartphones. However, another thing that we need to have an idea of is whether Google will only give you preset theme options (which seems like a very “Google” thing to do) or whether there will be a theme store that third parties can upload their creations to.

The latter option will be a lot more like what the competition is doing. For instance, there are paid and free themes available for Samsung Galaxy users, and that gives you a much wider variety to choose from. It also gives Samsung itself less work to do, developing first-party options.

Other major OEMs have first-party theme stores that allow people to create custom themes, so I am hoping that's the route that Google will take.