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Gboard looks like it's getting ready for Android XR (APK teardown)
- Gboard developers have been building a number of interface changes labeled as the “belka” UI.
- These tweaks include rounded keyboard corners, new drop shadows under keys, and key-press animations.
- It appears that all these changes are being prepared expressly for Android XR.
Google’s once again opening Android up to a new class of devices, and following efforts like Android TV and Wear OS, last week we saw the company formally announce Android XR. As we look forward to seeing what the first XR headsets taking advantage of that software will do, we’ve been tracking some early efforts of Android apps to support the new platform. Now the latest we’re putting under the microscope is Gboard, as we think about how a keyboard in XR should even work.
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.
Popping the hood of Gboard version 14.8.06.686567880-beta-arm64-v8a, we notice a few new changes all connected to what the app’s internally referring to as its “belka” UI. That’s a code name we haven’t seen before, and while we were initially unclear of the intention behind some of these interface tweaks, our analysis suggests that they’re intimately tied to Android XR.
One of the first you’ll notice is this new look with rounded corners. While that feels a bit queer on a phone screen like this, with a solid background behind it, it’s going to look much more natural when floating in a virtual environment. In fact, we already got an early look at nearly this very same layout in our hands-on of the Android XR UI:
We’ve been able to trigger the rounded-corner keyboard in both light and dark mode, but that’s just the start of the changes we’re seeing with the Gboard’s “belka” UI. There’s also a variant that implements a drop shadow under individual keys. This one’s much less pronounced (and just the slightest bit silly) in dark mode, but there’s still a version available.
The rounded corners make enough sense for XR, and while the shadows don’t necessarily feel XR-specific, their presence here isn’t a huge outlier, either. But this next change is just as curious as it is impossible to ignore: key-press animations.
We still have lots of questions about the role the keyboard will even play in Android XR, especially considering its emphasis on voice input, but at the end of the day it’s going to need some kind of traditional text-entry system. And if you’re not tapping away at keys on a touchscreen, maybe an animation like this really could make a lot of sense in terms of how to subconsciously signal to the user that they’re successfully typing.
Really, though, we’re going to need to keep digging to get a better sense at how this is all coming together. With the first Android XR hardware set to debut in 2025, it’s only going to be a matter of time before we get the chance to see what the keyboard experience is going to be like on Google’s new platform.