Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android Quick Share is currently in the process of rolling out a new UI, but even more changes could be in the works.
- Developers appear to be working on an interface that’s much more minimal, without explicit send and receive screens.
- It’s possible some of this work could be focused on Quick Share for larger-screen devices.
When it comes to app development, does progress ever really rest? No matter how many times you retool your app with a fresh new look, more optimized for user needs than ever, there’s always going to be room for improvement — or at least the chance to try something new. We only just began seeing Google really start distributing its new interface for Quick Share, and now we’ve already got some ideas about what it could be thinking about changing next.
We should start off by clarifying that just because we’ve found evidence of developers building a new UI for a service doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll ever see it widely released. It may fizzle out during internal testing, or make it to a limited A/B test before devs get enough feedback to understand what works — and what doesn’t. That’s important to keep in mind because what we’re seeing feels like quite the big departure from the changes rolling out presently, with discrete send and receive screens.
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Rather than sticking with that dichotomy, in Google Play Services version 25.35.31 beta we can see work on a new Quick Share UI that defaults to this new “add to share” screen. If you don’t start adding files to share, this is effectively the receive state, and you’ll eventually receive a notification if someone tries to transfer you something.
If you do start picking files to share, the app will begin looking for a target device, with any visible options appearing at the bottom of the screen. In a pinch, you can always pull up a QR code to get the transfer started that way.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Here’s what we’re expecting to see on the receiving end, first with that alert of an incoming file with the option to accept or decline. Once you get a transfer going, you’ll see a progress indicator, and the app should open a media preview when complete.
Why would Google be thinking about such an about-face on UI changes that it only just made? One hint might come from that note about dragging files to select them — that’s not an interaction that’s big on phones, but might make more sense if we’re using Quick Share in a desktop environment.
Playing with device settings a little, we’re able to see what this new UI will look like on something like a foldable or tablet, and there are some tweaks specifically for this bigger form factor. In all the pics so far you may have noticed the blue circle up top. That indicates you’re ready to receive files, and on bigger screens the app will also use this space to communicate your current settings for whom you’re accepting files from.
It might be getting ahead of ourselves to look at this in the context of the forthcoming Chrome OS/Android merger, but that’s absolutely one possibility for what Google could be thinking with these otherwise-confusing changes. For now, though, go ahead and enjoy Quick Share in its current incarnation, and keep checking in with us for any further progress we’re able to find on these revisions.
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