Google’s iOS apps will stop using the company’s Material Design interface elements, in favor of iOS’ native UIKit.

In a thread on Twitter, Jeff Verkoeyen, Google Design Lead for Apple platforms, explained that the company originally used its own Material Design libraries to fill gaps in Apple’s UIKit.

As UIKit has continued to evolve, however, maintaining code using Material Design has taken more time and effort, and led to Google’s apps drawing away from the look and feel of Apple’s iOS. The improvements to UIKit have also made much of Google’s reliance on Material Design unnecessary.

This year my team shifted the open source Material components libraries for iOS into maintenance mode. Why?

A 🧵…

— Jeff Verkoeyen (@featherless) October 7, 2021

The move is good news, not only for Google’s developers, but also for Apple customers who prefer a more unified experience across their apps.