Play Store gets updated UI, permissions tweak before Google I/O

With the Google I/O coming up, it looks like Google is ready to let us in on a few early goodies. Google Play has received a great new update that features some design tweaks as well as fixes and changes that are sure to make using the recently revamped Store easier to use.

Google had redesigned the whole Play Store last month to make it a lot more image heavy, with a lot of use of white space. Now, Google has released an update that appends itself to this redesigned Store to make it work better.

First up, when you open the Play Store on your phones, you’ll see that the six (or four, depending on where in the world you are) button layout is now shiny and colourful as compared to the earlier bland design. There is also some more space between the “Open” and “Uninstall” buttons when you browse through an app. This is an important change as a lot of users had been complaining that you would end up hitting one button for the other when using the Play Store. The buttons now have a lighter theme as compared to the dark one earlier.

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New features before the I/O

The “Wishlist” feature has changed too. Besides the fact that it’s now called “My wishlist” instead of “My Wishlist”, it now features apps, movies, books and songs in a card view instead of the earlier list one. The inconsistent sizes of the cards though stick out like a sore thumb. There is a new interface for the “redeem” option too that looks sleek.

Besides major UI changes, Google has introduced changes to permissions and accounts on Google Play Store too. Firstly, it will now warn you when a large update is about to be downloaded onto your Android devices. Good move, Google. The warning will allow users to switch to Wi-Fi to avoid exhausting your data limit before downloading an update. Now when you hit “Update All” and some of the apps have a new set of permissions, Google Play will ask you to accept them before moving on.

Interestingly, there are new syncing options for Google Play Services that pertain to “App Data” and “People Details”. This could just be for contacts or Google+ but all of these hint at the launch of “Play Games”. The service will probably use this to back game data up to a cloud. With the I/O scheduled to start tomorrow, we’ll probably see more details soon. The update is going to take a while to roll out, so don’t fret if you’re seeing the same old Store on your device.