When Coming to Google Photos Most of the time it seems like Google doesn’t know what to do with the status bar theme. There was a time when the status bar in the Google Photos app was a solid color; This was such a nice look that it was a bit of a waste of space. It was later modified to be completely transparent; This looked even weirder compared to the solid color we used to have and often made the clock and icons illegible.

Well, things are changing once again (via) 9to5Google) and finally, for the better. As of Google Photos 7.7, instead of a completely transparent and out-of-place status bar, there’s now a translucent bar that keeps your clock and status icons readable no matter what theme you’re using or what image you’re looking at. Photos remains one of Android’s best photo apps.

Google Photos looks good thanks to its latest update

We went from solid to transparent to translucent

Just above, you can see the transition of status bar designs for Google Photos; It started with a flat bar, then became transparent, making it impossible to read the time or status icon, and finally we see the newly released translucent status. bar that is both legible for your watch/icons and shows you the images at the bottom which is the best of both worlds. Things have also been improved with the dark theme, which you can see below.

Solid, clear and dark theme showing new translucent status bars

A small change makes a big difference

Of course, in the bigger scheme of things, a small change to the status bar theme in a particular app isn’t that big of a deal. But at the end of the day, it’s crucial to make sure an app looks good and is easy to navigate, and with the new change to the status bar in Google Photos, not only can we read the status bar clearly so it’s much easier to read. but we can also see what’s underneath the bar using translucency for an attractive look that’s actually more functional than the previous design. So if you didn’t like the transparent status bar in Google Photos before, Google has finally made something solid and improved for the better for everyone, it’s a welcome change indeed.