Google Material You’s theming system to go open source with Android 12.1

No doubt and Google itself revealed that the Android 12 has the biggest design changes in the history of its mobile phone operating system. Besides, the company confirmed that it has used a new yet wallpaper-based theming engine, code-named “monet.”

To be mentioned, the US tech giant has not introduced the full-fledged version of Material You with previous Android 12 Beta builds, and the recent report revealed that consumers have to wait until the new wallpaper-based theming engine goes open source, which could be done with the so-called Android 12.1.

Wallpaper-based theming: Algorithm

“Monet”, which is a wallpaper-based theme generator, is one of the key features of Android 12’s Material You functionality. This feature automatically generates a color palette for the system based on the user’s wallpaper.

Google said that, a color extraction engine employing a clustering algorithm with Material color targets determines the dominant and less dominant colors of the user’s wallpaper.

A palette generation algorithm then creates a rich palette of 5 colors — 2 neutral and 3 accent colors — as well as 12 shades of Material color that are used to determine the hues closest to the user’s wallpaper.

Expect “monet” to go open source with 12.1

According to the information (via XDA), a developer open-sourced his dynamic color palette generator similar to Google’s “monet”, which shows the AOSP algorithm for post-processing/filtering of extracted colors is reportedly “pretty close” to Google’s proprietary solution.

Well, it looks like the search engine giant is ready to release the source code for this algorithm as two sources confirmed that Google recently did a code change – “add monet to AOSP.” However, this patch was previously available in the Android 13 internal beta, but it’s now coming to Android version 12.1.

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Notably, the palette generation algorithm is a key part of the theming process, which is expected to open source with the upcoming Android generation, Android 12.1. Just to remind, the company had previously confirmed that the wallpaper-based theming system will first come for Pixels this fall.

Non-Android One phones?

On the other hand, there’s no information available regarding how other OEMs such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and OnePlus will use this feature for their custom Android skins. In addition, it’s also unknown whether Google brings Android 12.1 to non-Pixels or not, or it remains exclusive to the rumored Pixel Fold.