Towards the end of last year, we wrote about how the Google Play Store on the web was to receive a massive visual overhaul, making it much nicer and cleaner. At that time, the new layout, which featured game trailers as landing page headers for games, a minimalist user interface for browsing books, etc., was initially only available at Taiwan and Korea.
I clicked on a Play Store link from a YouTube video this morning and realized the interface looked completely different to me. Not wanting to get too excited, I realized I’d saved the Taiwanese storefront as a PWA on my Chromebook in order to drool over its gorgeous design, so I made sure to double-check that all apps, games, books, and others have been listed in English instead.
Sure enough, I could install games, access my account information at the top right of the screen, and browse at will without encountering any books, movies, etc. Korean or Taiwanese. It’s official – I live in the United States and now I see the brand new redesign of the Google Play Store web app!
To refresh your memory, this update ditches the left sidebar in favor of the top navigation. It also has plenty of extra negative space or padding around everything, giving each ad its own place to shine without feeling cramped. While that might sound geeky, my absolute favorite aspect of this whole rollout is that everything from screenshots to book covers, app and game icons, etc., all have rounded corners instead of edges. squares! I can’t tell you how big this simple change is taking Google’s storefront in 2022.
I’m curious if any of you reading this have also received the new Google Play Store PWA redesign, and if so, if you’re in the UK or elsewhere! I think we’ll see the company one day abandon the Play Store app downloaded and installed on Chromebooks in favor of the web app, but that’s just a guess. Since Android is built into ChromeOS, it has all the dependencies it needs to download apps, but if that’s the case and the store is just an interface, there might not be be no reason to delete it because it probably won’t matter. Let me know what you think!
Finally, I wanted to point out that the new design does something I’ve wanted for years – it separates your wishlist items based on their type. It used to be that your store’s wishlist was a big jumble of books, movies, games, apps, and more. Now, as you can see below, everything is easier to browse and choose – hooray! Unfortunately, when viewing your Library, your Play Books and Audiobooks are redirected to the old ugly Store design, while Movies and TV, Apps and Games all display beautifully in the new layout. on page.
