Google testing dynamic navigation bar w/ Gboard to match your keyboard’s color

Google continually evolves its various applications, and Gboard for Android has seen a lot of updates over the past few months. Currently, Google is testing a new tweak to the popular keyboard which enables a dynamic navigation bar theme. Gboard has been experimenting a bit with extending its theming capabilities for a little while now. Earlier this month, we found a dark theme within the app built for saving battery on OLED screens. Now, XDA-Developers has discovered a new option which extends the theme of the keyboard to the navigation bar below. This dynamic navigation bar is, in itself, nothing particularly new. Developers have been able to control the color of the navigation bar with their apps for quite some time, some even taking full advantage of it with customizable themes. With this Gboard integration, the navigation bar simply matches the color of the theme it currently has. If your keyboard is themed in red, for instance, the navigation bar would follow suit. Notably, though, this doesn’t work if you’re using an image as your keyboard background. It only works with static colors. It’s unclear when Google intends to roll this feature out publicly, but we can hope it will be in the near future.