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12 best Material You apps you can try on Android 12
Material You is the name of the big visual overhaul in Android 12. It includes dynamic theming from your wallpaper, as well as your widgets. It’s fairly new so there aren’t a lot of examples yet. However, we expect most popular apps to add Material You support over the course of the next year or two. We’re sure folks on Android 12 want to play with it some more and we’re here to help.
Here are the best Material You apps you can try on Android 12 right now.
The best Material You apps you can try on Android 12
DarQ
Price: Free
DarQ is a per-app dark mode selector. It’s a bit of a pain to install and use, but it works quite well once it is. You’ll also need Shizuku (Google Play) if you don’t already have root. Basically, once everything is set up, you’ll be able to force specific apps into dark mode without enabling dark mode on your entire phone.
It was updated with Material You not too long ago, so the app’s theming syncs with your Material You theme. It’s not available on Google Play, so you’ll have to get it on GitHub.
Infinity for Reddit
Price: Free
Infinity for Reddit is one of many third-party Reddit apps for Android. This isn’t the only Reddit app with Material You but it’s the one we’re going with. This one is pretty simple overall and includes things like auto-scroll, multi-account support, and a night theme. One of the changes in the app’s latest changelog shows it supports Material You as well, so that’s another level of theming.
To be honest, it’s not the most powerful Reddit app, but it’s pretty, it works, and it’s free.
Inware
Price: Free
Inware is a simple and really nice app. It shows you various information about your phone, such as whether or not it has Treble support, seamless updates support, and your phone’s basic specs. That’s about all it does but it’s a much faster and easier way to find out that information instead of looking it up on Google. The app is free and even if it’s niche, it does exactly what it says without hassle.
KWGT (and third-party widgets)
Price: Free / $5.99 / varies
KWGT is a surprisingly good option for Material You-style widgets. The app is a custom widget maker and you can do a lot of really cool stuff with it. You can also download custom widgets that other people made. Some good examples include Kombine (Google Play) and Android 12 KWGT (Google Play). Both of those contain wallpapers that change with your wallpaper just like Google’s stock Material You widgets on Android 12.
There’s a bit of a learning curve, but nothing too serious once you get used to it. KWGT premium costs $5.99 and is free via Google Play Pass if you have it.
Neko Manga Reader
Price: Free
Neko Manga Reader is an open-source manga reader that’s a fork of the popular Tachiyomi. It added Material You support as of version 2.5.5. It’s pretty decent as a manga reader. You search for a manga you like and then read it. To be honest, it’s not a difficult app to use in the slightest and the reading controls are simple and effective.
This one isn’t available on Google Play so we linked to its GitHub page if you want it.
Pix Material You Icons and Widgets
Price: $1.49
Pix Material You Icons and Widgets is a fairly self-explanatory app. It’s an icon and widget pack. The icons in the icon pack are themeable with Material You. You have to reset the icons after every wallpaper change but it does actually work. The app also includes a selection of simple widgets that pull color from the wallpaper like the stock Google widgets.
You’ll need a third-party launcher in order to use it since the stock Google launcher doesn’t allow icon packs. The app itself also works with Material You.
Pix Wallpapers
Price: Free / Up to $9.99
Pix Wallpapers is a wallpaper app, featuring a number of light and dark abstract and minimal wallpapers. The app works pretty well and navigation is easy enough to figure out. Recent updates also added Material You theming so the app changes colors when you change things up.
There aren’t a lot of wallpaper choices so that may put some people off, but there are enough good ones to recommend it to people.
SeriesGuide
Price: Free / $4.99 per month / $24.99 per year
SeriesGuide is an app for TV show and movie enthusiasts. It keeps track of the shows you watch and recommends new shows or new episodes of shows you like when they release. The app also includes backup and sync options, integration with Trakt, and extension support for both third parties and your own.
The free version of the app is open source and has no ads. There’s also an optional subscription that includes more widgets, better notifications, and some other little extras. It also has Material You, like all the other apps on the list.
Swift Walls
Price: Free / Up to $9.99
Swift Walls is a bit of a double threat for Material You apps. The UI looks a little bit like the Styles & Wallpapers picker and the app also adheres to Material You’s dynamic colors. It works like a normal wallpaper app, where you browse through wallpapers, pick the one you want, and set it as your wallpaper. There’s also a preview mode, various categories to sort through, and a filter option where you can add filters to the wallpaper.
Between this and Pix Wallpapers above, there are quite a few good wallpapers.
Tasker
Price: $3.49
Tasker is one of Android’s most powerful tools for automation, triggers, and actions. Tasker has Material You in two ways. The first is the app’s theme where you can make it Material You in the settings menu. It also has a new Get Material You Colors function that extracts the colors and lets you use them on whatever you’re working on in the app.
Tasker has quite a learning curve, but you can do all kinds of crazy things with it, including Material You theming.
Wavelet
Price: Free / $5.99
Wavelet is a per-headphone EQ app that lets you change the equalizer settings, depending on which headphone you’re using. It offers an auto-EQ mode for over 3,000 consumer headphones or you can override the EQ and do it yourself. The app also includes a bass booster, a reverb function, a channel balance function, and some other small things.
Recent updates also implemented Material You theming into the app so it looks as modern as it can. It also makes a good replacement for Dolby Atmos if you don’t have it on your phone already.
Many Google apps
Price: Free
Of course, Google is adding Material You to its apps about as fast as it can. The list is already pretty extensive and includes the stock Phone app, Gmail, Google Keep, the entire Google Drive suite, Google Meet, Google Calendar, Google Calculator, Google Clock, Google Lens, Gboard (beta), Google Camera, Files by Google, Google Contacts, YouTube Music, and the Canary release of Google Chrome.
That’s already quite the list and we’re sure more is coming in the future. For the time being, Google’s apps are the best examples of Material You for both apps and widgets.
If we missed any great Material You apps (and we probably did), tell us about it in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.