Gboard update brings Emoji 12.0, nav bar color matching, more

A new Google Gboard update is rolling out right now, bringing with it a few new features. One of them isn’t in the changelog but is particularly nice: a color-matching nav bar which changes depending on your Gboard theme.

On previous versions of Gboard, your Android nav bar would be one of two colors: black or white. If your Gboard theme is very colorful, it didn’t look quite right to have the nav bar stand out so much. However, with this new Gboard update, that problem is fixed, at least when it comes to colors and gradients.

As you can see in the images below, if you use a background image for your Gboard theme, the nav bar will once again default to either black or white. However, this makes sense as Gboard would have to stretch the image to make it fit, which would arguably look worse.

Another new feature in this Gboard update that is listed in the changelog is the addition of new Emoji 12.0 images. These new additions include the sloth as well as many of the gender-neutral Emojis becoming the default selections for certain Emoji types.

Unfortunately, we at Android Authority saw the nav bar change but not the new Emojis, so we don’t have screenshots to share. However, Android Police was able to see them.

The changelog for Gboard update 8.2.9.247053488 is listed below:

• Support for Emoji 12.0 in Android Q
• Sticky preferences for emoji skin tone and gender
• Clipboard: quick access to your favorite snippets
• Import / export personal dictionary words
• Long press to delete search history
• Vertical scrolling for expressions (Beta)

You can wait for the latest version to show for you on the Google Play Store, or you can head to APKMirror and download the new Gboard update manually.