Android 15 prepares revamped status bar with new icons and haptics

Thanks to the first two developer previews, we already have a good idea about what new features the upcoming Android 15 update may bring to the table. While it’s likely that Android 15 will bring a lot of new, useful features, it’s unlikely that it’ll also bring major UI changes. That’s not to say there won’t be any UI changes, though, as we previously reported that Android 15 may revamp the volume panel. In addition, we can now report that Google is working on revamping the status bar icons as well as adding haptic feedback to more parts of the system.

The status bar is one of the most recognizable parts of the Android OS, and its design hasn’t significantly changed over the years. It’s the UI element at the top of the screen that displays icons for various information. While the position of some status bar elements has shifted over the years to accommodate changes in phone design, the basic design of most status bar icons hasn’t changed in years. The icons for Wi-Fi signal strength, mobile data signal strength, and battery in Android 14 look very, very similar to the icons from Android 5.0 Lollipop released in 2014, if you can believe it.

Android 5.0 is when Google introduced the first version of its Material Design language, which means the icon designs we see today in Android 14 are based on an older version of Google’s design language. With the introduction of Material You in Android 12, we’re now at the third major iteration of Google’s design language, but the status bar icons haven’t changed much since Material You’s introduction, with the exception of Android 10 bringing outlined borders to the icons.

With the upcoming Android 15 update, some of the status bar icons may once again feature a segmented design, harkening back to the pre-Android 5.0 era. Furthermore, the status bar icon for battery may finally support showing the current battery level inside the icon as opposed to on the right of the icon. Here are screenshots showing off the new status bar icon designs for the Wi-Fi signal strength, mobile data signal strength, and battery in Android 15, in both light and dark mode.

The charging chip that appears when you plug your device in to charge is also being updated, as shown below.

If you don’t like the battery level, though, you can turn it off. Here’s how that will look in both dark and light modes:

Haptic feedback updates, too

In addition to these new icons, Android 15 may also add a bit of haptic feedback to the Quick Settings panel. When you long-press on a Quick Setting tile such as Bluetooth, your phone will vibrate a bit as the tile expands to open the relevant settings page.

Lastly, Android 15 will soon also add some haptic feedback to the volume slider that appears when you press either volume key. There’ll be a bit of haptic feedback when moving the slider to adjust the level of the current volume stream, much like how there’s now haptic feedback when adjusting the brightness level using the slider in the Quick Settings panel. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to capture these haptic feedback changes on video, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

These UI and haptic changes are not currently enabled in the public Android 15 Developer Preview 2 release, so I had to manually enable them for this article. If Google does move forward with these changes, it’s possible we’ll see them in the first or maybe second public beta of Android 15. We’ll keep an eye out to see if these changes land, but in the meantime, let us know in the comments how you feel about these design changes!