Google’s Material You redesign was meant to give its apps more personality. It would've introduced bold colors, dynamic shapes, and fonts that adapt to system settings.
That design has been expressive alright, but not in the way anyone hoped. The Clock and Phone apps are points of reference. They now have an oversized layout and feel more distracting than before. In a new turn of events, users have also spotted jittering numbers and unstable alignment in the UI.
Material 3 Expressive design has many issues
Users are noticing that Google’s new Material 3 Expressive redesign for the Clock app isn’t working the way it should. Every time the seconds tick forward on the stopwatch or timer, the digits jitter and shift around because of the variable-width font Google picked.
Some have also noticed that the oversized layout breaks in weird ways. On certain phones, the word “Stopwatch” doesn’t fit on one line anymore, and the letter “h” drops down. It outright looks bad and sloppy.
Others find that controls no longer fit neatly on a single page, so they have to scroll to reach basic buttons that used to be right there. And if bold text is enabled in system settings, the jitter and spacing issues become even worse.
There seems to be no issue with the Phone app, besides the dramatic pill-shaped slider button. My biggest peeve with it is that it isn't vertical, which suits muscle memory more than swiping left and right.
Similar complaints have piled up on Reddit, X, and Google’s own forums, with videos circulating to prove the glitches. Google eventually responded through its Pixel Community account and admitted the problem’s existence. They've since promised a fix with no definite timeline.
Chrome is now Expressive
Google Chrome is the latest to get the Material 3 Expressive redesign, and that makes the stakes much higher for Google. Now that it's spreading across Google’s most widely used apps, any technical flaws scale instantly to millions of users.
The design has since been in testing through Chrome’s Canary channel, where Google tries out experimental features before deciding if they’re ready for the public. It now sits in the stable version of Chrome, which means Google feels confident enough that it works as intended. Let's hope so.
Several noticeable changes have appeared in the browser. The loading indicator at the top of the page now has rounded corners and has softened what used to be a straight-edged progress bar.
Inside the three-dot menu, all the key icons like Forward, Bookmark, Download, Site Info, and Refresh are now sitting inside neat circular containers. The old separation between the top and bottom rows of icons has been removed.
In the tab grid view, the New Tab button is now boxed into a square, while the Incognito mode icon has been updated and placed alongside the tab counter and tab groups within a rectangular box.
The most significant expressive change is how tab groups now work, where instead of just showing a small colored dot on a group card, the entire group of tabs is tinted with the chosen color.
