Holo (design language)

Holo is a discontinued design language developed by Google for the Android operating system.

Holo
Android homescreen with Holo, running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on a Galaxy Nexus.
Developer	Google
Initial release	February 22, 2011; 14 years ago (2011-02-22)
Platform	Android
Predecessor	Android Honeycomb User Interface
Successor	Material Design

Holo first appeared in Android Ice Cream Sandwich evolving from the user interface introduced by Android Honeycomb but the same futuristic aesthetics of Android Honeycomb were used in favor of flat design with neon blue accenting, hard edges, and drop shadows. Holo also introduced a new default system font, Roboto; designed to replace the Droid font family, Roboto was primarily optimized for use on high-resolution mobile displays.^[1]

Google discontinued Holo in 2014 and it was replaced by its successor Material Design used in Android 5.0 Lollipop and later.^[2] Material Design is also used in Google Workspace applications.^[3]

Updates

Android 4.4 KitKat

Android KitKat's user interface further downgraded the Holo interface appearance used on 4.0 and later until 4.3, replacing most instances of blue accenting with greys and white (such as the status bar icons), and getting rid of the Wi-Fi upstream and downstream traffic indicators (triangles pointing up and down), though they can still be seen in the quick control center menu.^[4]

The Wi-Fi icon colour when only a connection to an access point with no Internet access has been established has changed from grey to orange.^[5]

The appearance may deviate in custom vendor distributions such as TouchWiz.