Pixel phones haven’t been known for offering lots of customisation options, but that’s changing with the latest Android updates. With the first quarterly release of Android 16, Google has introduced Material 3 Expressive, which brings brighter colours, new designs, and a fresh look across Pixel phones.
While Pixels are still behind some competitors that let you apply a full theme in one click, Google is working on ways to make theming simpler, allowing users to change home screens, lock screens, and system colours more easily.
Pixel Themes & The Theme Manager
Google is developing “Pixel themes,” which will let users apply multiple customisation options bundled together in a single theme pack.
This system relies on a new feature called Theme Manager, discovered in Android 16 QPR2 beta builds.
Theme Manager changes how system themes are handled by Android, offering a central, safer way for apps to store, validate, and apply theme settings.
Only apps with a special permission can make changes, reducing the risk of crashes or conflicts that happened with the old setup.
How Android Theming Works
Earlier, Android used Material You, which extracts colours from your wallpaper to generate a set of 65 colours for system elements.
While this worked, the system stored preferences in a single block of text, which could break if any modification failed.
The new Theme Manager makes the process more structured and reliable, allowing apps to send a preset theme with predefined system and accent colours.
This opens the door for Pixel users to quickly switch between ready-made themes instead of manually changing each setting.
The new system is likely the foundation for Google’s upcoming Pixel theme packs, which could include wallpapers, colours, fonts, and other visual elements.
With Theme Manager, Google is modernising theming on Pixel devices, making it safer and easier for both the system and apps to manage changes.
While the API isn’t public yet, it could appear in Android 16 QPR2, giving Pixel users access to these new personalisation options months before Android 17 arrives.
