Back in September last year, a redesign for the ‘My Apps’ section in the Google Play Store was spotted in a teardown of the app’s code. The refreshed design – which is known to be in the works for a while – replaced the ‘My apps & games’ page with a new ‘Manage apps & device’ section, consolidating a lot of the functionality into just two tabs. Now, it looks like the refreshed design is beginning to gradually roll out to users.
The updated design drops the existing tabs for just the ‘Overview’ and ‘Manage’ sections, with the Overview tab displaying a summary of pending app updates, device storage details, ratings and reviews, and the peer-to-peer app sharing functionality. The Manage section houses what was included in the Library tab and allows for users to filter between installed and owned apps or those with available updates. The screenshots from last year suggest that users can select the desired apps from the list for updating or sharing them.
The change is seeing mixed reception from users on a thread by Reddit user KnownStruggle1 (via AndroidPolice) who shared a screenshot of the new UI, with most responses pointing out the extra steps now required to update individual apps. However, the addition of the peer-to-peer sharing feature will be a welcome one for those with limited bandwidth or unreliable connections since the app will allow them to share APK files instead of just Play Store download links.
The update with the redesigned ‘My apps & games’ section seems to be rolling out gradually to users mostly via a server-side update. While some users report receiving the update a few weeks ago – likely as part of an A/B testing effort – those running the latest version of the app are yet to see the change.