Google will fix duplicate Material You colors from Android 15 and Android 14 after all [U]

Strange behavior in Android 15 leaves Material You theming color palettes being duplicated, leading to fewer options, but Google says everything is “working as intended” – then changed its mind.

The style options in Android have been using Material You for the past few years to generate a color palette that gets used throughout the system. Usually, around a dozen options are generated, but it’s been noted that duplicates have been showing up.

This was noticed by some in early Android 15 beta releases, and continues in the final release. Out of the dozen options, two or three, or more, might be duplicates. Android Authority highlighted the issue, claiming that it does not happen on Android 14. That’s not quite true, though. We went back to some older Pixels to verify this wasn’t happening in the past, and it wasn’t happening back in Android 13 or early Android 14 builds, but we immediately spotted the issue still happening on a Pixel 9 Pro XL running Android 14. So while this is relatively recent behavior, it’s not just happening in Android 15.

Obviously, that shouldn’t happen, but Google claims that it’s working as “intended.”

The behavior was posted to Google’s Issue Tracker, and marked as “won’t fix (intended behavior)” in September.

Thanks for the feedback. We have looked into the issue you have reported and would like to inform you that this is working as intended.

Why is this the case? It’s hard to say for certain. One theory we’ve got is that the page used for customization is set to show around a dozen choices, and if enough palettes to fill that entire list are not generated, it duplicates entries to fill the list. That’s still not great, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Update 11/11: In a change of heart, Google has marked this issue as “Fixed” recently, saying that the fix will be applied in “an upcoming release.” In theory, this fix should appear in future beta releases of Android, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

Notably, Google had re-opened the issue in October when we first covered the behavior, but the company had linked to evidence of the issue in a post that was completely unrelated, so it was uncertain whether or not a fix would actually be coming.

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