Material You design language has been one of the most impressive customization features that have been added to Android. It picks up colors from the phone’s wallpaper and applies those colors to the UI elements of the OS as well as native and third-party apps. This feature, apart from giving the UI a personal touch, makes non-native apps look like an integral part of the OS, giving you a uniform theme across the software and apps.
However, one drawback of Material You is that it doesn’t work with certain accessibility options, and one such option is high-contrast text. As soon as you turn on the high contrast text option, the Material You theme gets disabled, and the OS defaults to white color for text and black color for the background or vice versa to make it easier for the user to read text on the device. Well, Android 14 might overcome this problem and extend the Material You design even to those people who rely on accessibility options. And as usual, it will most probably make it to Samsung’s One UI 6 software sometime in the future.
Android 14 to be more consistent with Material You theming of accessibility features
Mishaal Rahman, a freelance journalist, has found evidence suggesting that Android might implement Material You design in the high-contrast text accessibility option. The theming engine for Material You (codenamed Monet) creates dynamic color palettes based on your wallpaper’s color. According to Mishaal, this theming engine in Android 14 will tweak palette colors to increase the contrast of the text when the high-contrast text option is enabled.
That means people who rely on the high-contrast text option will also be able to enjoy the Material You design language with Android 14. The improved Material You theming engine in Android 14 will offer the same colorful and personalized UI while retaining high-contrast text. Apart from finding evidence of this feature in Android 14’s code, Mishaal also spotted a commit for this feature in the Material Components library, which further strengthens its existence. However, it is to be seen if this feature makes it to the stable version of the OS.
Speaking on Android 14, it will come tweaked with One UI 6.0 on Samsung smartphones and tablets, and here’s a list of all the Samsung devices that are eligible for the Android 14-based One UI 6.0 update.
In Android 14, Android's dynamic color engine ("monet") seems to be adding better support for users who enable "high contrast text" to improve visibility!
Apps should look good for everyone, including those who rely on Android's accessibility features! pic.twitter.com/3gOXXNls2T
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) April 3, 2023
