As part of the second preview of Android 14, Pixel phones have received a new monochrome Material U theme and are set to add custom lock screen clocks.
Since the launch of Material U with Android 12, Google has been steadily building on that solid foundation, including color variations that use your wallpaper palette in new ways and preset themes that aren’t based on your wallpaper.
In the latter category, Android 14 DP2 introduces a new monochrome theme, denoted by a black and white circle in the theme chooser. As you’d expect, the theme removes all color from Android’s menus and any Content You-compatible apps.
Besides looking kinda cool, the new monochrome Material U theme is actually added as an accessibility feature. I talked to a person with cataplexy earlier; He notes that the colors of Google’s Material You theme sometimes trigger seizures. For someone like this, a monochrome theme would likely go a long way toward making the Pixel phone more usable without disabling the colors.
Meanwhile, adding custom clocks to Pixel phones has long been a goal for Google, with work on it starting at least as early as 2019. As seen in the screenshot above, it looks like the company is making another attempt at this with Android 14, as the Wallpaper and Style applet includes a prominently placed option labeled “Clock settings”. Is.
The subtitle suggests that this should allow you to “Choose custom clock”. For now, however, this option does nothing, presumably because there aren’t any custom clocks installed from which to choose. As the Custom Clock option appears without being enabled forcibly by our team, it is quite possible that Google intends to launch this feature as part of the final release of Android 14.
Another tip in Wallpaper & Style that’s worth noting is a new bug related to Material U-themed icons. If you do a fresh install of Android 14 DP2 on a device, the Themed icons toggle is no longer available, instead only updating the phone that is already set up. We’re not sure what the fix for this issue will be, though it may be fixed in a future DP2.1 update.
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