WhatsApp is testing a new look for its Android app, with a navigation bar that floats above the screen and changes shape as you move through your chats. The redesign has appeared for some people using the beta version of the app, replacing the fixed bar that has sat at the bottom of the screen since 2024 with something lighter and more responsive to the way you scroll.
The change was spotted in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.26.45.5 by WABetaInfo, the independent site that tracks unreleased features in the company’s test builds. It is the latest in a series of interface experiments WhatsApp has been running on Android this year, and like most of them it is reaching testers gradually rather than all at once. WhatsApp has not said when, or even whether, the new design will reach everyone on the stable version of the app.
Instead of a solid strip fixed to the bottom edge of the screen, the new bar floats slightly above it, with rounded corners and a partly transparent finish that lets a little of the content behind it show through.
A Bar That Shrinks as You Scroll
The clever part is what happens when you start moving through your messages. As you scroll down through a chat list, the bar shrinks into a smaller, pill-shaped version of itself. It becomes shorter and narrower, and the small text labels beneath each icon disappear, leaving just the icons. The bar keeps its rounded corners and floating look, but it now occupies far less of the screen, so more of your conversations are visible at once.
Scroll back up and the bar expands again to its full size, with the labels returning beneath the icons. It is a small touch, but it changes the feel of the app: the navigation is there when you need it and quietly steps out of the way when you are reading. A circular marker now highlights whichever tab is selected, replacing the older pill-shaped highlight, and there is a soft blur effect beneath the bar as it floats over the chat list.
This is not the first time WhatsApp has tried a floating bar. An early version was spotted in beta 2.26.41.6 in late September, when it was still under development and not available even to testers, and a version without labels followed in early October.
The New Look Reaches All Four Main Sections
The redesigned bar is not limited to the main chat screen. It appears across all four of the app’s main sections: Chats, Updates, Contacts and Calls. That means the change is a single, consistent piece of design rather than a tweak to one screen, and it is how WhatsApp has tended to roll out navigation changes in the past, with the same bar following you wherever you go in the app.
It is also part of a broader round of interface work, with a separate redesign of the Settings screen still under development. That steady pace is familiar: in March 2024 the company moved the navigation bar from the top of the screen to the bottom, saying it would sit closer to users’ thumbs, and changed its colour from green to white at the same time.
How to Try the New Design
For now, the only way to see the floating bar is through WhatsApp’s beta programme on Android. Users can join through the WhatsApp listing in the Google Play Store, where a “Become a tester” option appears when places are available, and then update the app to receive beta builds. Places are limited and the programme fills up often, so joining is not always possible.
Even then, installing the latest beta does not guarantee the new bar will appear. WhatsApp switches most interface changes on from its own servers, so a feature can sit inside a beta build for weeks before it is activated for a particular account. WABetaInfo reports that the floating bar is reaching a limited group of testers first and should expand to more of them over the coming weeks, which is the usual pattern for a change of this kind.
The interest in such a small change says something about the scale of the app involved. WhatsApp is owned by Meta, which bought it in 2014 in a deal announced at about 19 billion dollars, and Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April 2025 that it had passed three billion monthly users.
That is also why WhatsApp tends to move carefully with its design. A navigation bar is not a feature most people think about, but it is the part of the app they use most. The floating bar, with its shrinking pill and its quiet blur, is a modest idea rather than a dramatic one. Whether it becomes the standard look for Android, or joins the long list of beta experiments that never reach everyone, will become clear over the next few weeks as more testers see it appear.
