We’re Glad to See Android 12’s Theme Engine in Samsung’s Latest One UI Beta

I downloaded and installed the latest One UI 4 beta onto my Galaxy S21 Ultra yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see Android 12’s best feature. Honestly, I didn’t expect Samsung to build in Google’s new wallpaper-powered theme engine into One UI, but here it is and so far it’s pretty great.

If you haven’t been able to use it yet, Android 12 has a theme engine that is powered by the color of your current wallpaper. If you have a green wallpaper, your device’s theme will automatically go green. If it’s a blue wallpaper, you’ll get a blue theme. If you want a bit more contrast, there are preselected color options you can choose from, too. The theme extends to the notification bar and system toggles, as well as app widgets and action buttons inside of select apps. Needless to say, if you’re on Android 12, you can’t miss it.

Samsung’s implementation of the theme engine is pretty similar to Google’s on Pixel devices, but it’s not as thorough. For example, while Samsung lets you choose from colors, they do not include Google’s themed icons option. In all honesty, that’s fine because Google’s themed icons feature is not great at all, as many 3rd-party apps will likely never add their own custom icons. Samsung’s own theme engine still allows for adding in custom icons, so it’s possible the company didn’t think it important to double down on that for users.

To access this new menu, long press your home screen and hit the “Wallpaper” option. From here, you’ll see a new “Color Theme” section. It’s from there that you can access the new color options.

If you’re running the Android 12 beta on a Galaxy S21 device, you’re probably loving this. We’re very glad to see Samsung is really taking the update game seriously lately and bringing over some of the great features. We expect nothing less from the King of Android updates.