As The Verge reports, the images were uploaded by Kirill Grouchnikov yesterday. Grouchnikov has worked as an engineer on the Play Store app for the past six years but is now progressing to another team within Google.
The screenshots appear to be polished and production-ready but they may not actually show finalised versions of the designs. There is no word on when the update will roll-out but it looks to be a pretty substantial refresh of the current interface.
The biggest change is in the general layout of the app. The homepage is now divided into just two categories, “Apps & Games” and “Entertainment”, providing more separation between the two different broad content types of the Store. Apps & Games retains its usual sub-categories while Entertainment is divided into Movies & TV, Music, Books and Newsstand.
There is better use of space on the homepage now as the simplifying of categories has freed up an entire new pane at the top of the display. This is used as a content showcase that highlights popular apps and categories on top of full-colour background images. A similar effect can be observed in the header at the top of the Microsoft Store in Windows 10.
The new Google Play also features reworked animations and support for languages that are usually read from right-to-left. The search bar has seen some attention and has been updated to use the new Google logo but still retains its permanent position at the very top of the interface.
The changes aren’t so far-reaching as the current design was when it was first introduced but do represent a significant modernising of the gateway to the Google media ecosystem.
The Play Store debuted as the Android Market back in 2008. It boasted just 100 apps but quickly ballooned in size, reaching 500,000 by 2012 when it was relaunched as the Play Store and used to hold other kinds of entertainment including music and videos instead of just apps.
Grouchnikov released an image showing the evolution of the Store from the original Android Market of 2008 through its first rebranding as “Play Store”, its subsequent refresh into its current base design, inaugurated in 2013, and finally to the reworked app which will apparently be launching “soon.”
