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Gmail notification icons on Android are no longer red

Back in June, Google updated Gmail for Android so that the notification icon is no longer red, but changed course a few days later. Red has been dropped again, but Dynamic Color is not implemented in its place.

After version 2023.11.26.x, Gmail’s notification icon no longer has a red background. However, instead of Dynamic Color theming being leveraged to match your device’s wallpaper, a generic light blue circle is used. 

This is presumably a mistake as that shade is in no way associated with Gmail’s brand. The last time this occurred, Google reverted the change within seven days. This update is widely rolling out today.

It would be a shame if Google dropped the red notification icon that helped email alerts stand out, but Dynamic Color would be the ideal next choice.

In other Gmail news, Google explained the cause of last week’s back-to-back issues where email delivery was delayed.

Google runs a core message processing system that is responsible for delivering, monitoring, queuing, and receiving email messages. The root cause of both incidents was an atypical pattern of email traffic, resulting in high resource utilization in this system and delays in email delivery.

In response, the company is going to “implement rate limit mechanisms in [its] systems.”

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com