Google has recently spotted updated progress indications similar to those found on iOS devices. It’s almost certainly a limited test. It indicates that Google is installing app icons in the launcher or updating already installed icons. Google uses a bar that shows that updating or installing is in progress, and the text shows what is happening.
The function uses an outside progress bar that follows the edge of the icon rather than an internal circular/pie progress bar, which is slightly different from iOS. Based on the instances we’ve seen, it also appears to be picking up on system accent color signals. During the update process, it, like iOS, grays out the app icon and replaces the text beneath it with a summary of the current update action.
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The launcher shows a notification for every new app when we configure the launcher to display the app on the screen. The app is displayed with a progress bar and text until installed.
We should also mention that Android does the same with apps when we restore them from backups during the device setup process.
Although it has a similar progress indicator that follows the icon shape, it does not replace the label as this newly discovered feature does.
Information gathered from a “Pixel 5 running Android12 Beta1 and a recent version of the Play Store.
It is not clear which apps or app versions have been tested whether these are related to the Android 12 feature or something else. We do not know until reports of changing surfaces become widely available.
Google is known to conduct extensive A/B tests on the Play Store, and we may see this come and go in various forms over the next few months.
According to Artem Russakovskii, a former AP owner, the feature works when we enable “Add new apps to Home screen”, which we can do manually. We put it through its paces on the Pixel Launcher and the One UI launcher.
