Create Gemini loading animation using Jetpack compose

Mind Motion 🧑🏼‍🎨

Setting meaningful animations is crucial to creating smooth mobile experiences. I’m particularly fond of the term “mind motion,” which means that animation must be logical and predictable by the human mind. Creating a natural and interactive change by morphing the app icon into the app frame is a better alternative to having the user click on the icon to open the app out of nowhere.

When I came across the loading animation for Gemini on mobile, I was quite impressed and decided to try to recreate it. I would appreciate any suggestions in the comments to make it better. 🕺

Breakdown ䷪

Let’s break down the animation and try to replicate it.

• As you may have noticed, the core style of the animation is a gradient.
• The gradient animates across the X-axis. First, it enters from behind the screen, then goes through the screen’s full width, exits out of the screen bounds, and then repeats.
• To make it easier to imagine how the animation goes, Here is a diagram that I crafted to wrap my head around the concept. 😉

Figure 1 — Illustrated timeline of the animation.

💡 Note: It’s essential to start and end the animation outside the screen boundaries to achieve a natural feel.

Implementation 🧑🏻‍💻

Let’s write code 🙌

We can use Jetpack Compose’s LinearGradient Brush as a skeleton for our animation.

@Stable
fun linearGradient(
colors: List<Color>,
start: Offset = Offset.Zero,
end: Offset = Offset.Infinite,
 tileMode: TileMode = TileMode.Clamp
): Brush = LinearGradient(
      colors = colors,
      stops = null,
      start = start,
      end = end,
      tileMode = tileMode   
)

• This Composable function draws a gradient in our scene and enables X-axis animation via startOffset and endOffset.
• I chose to create our animation effect as a Modifier, To ensure that we can apply it to any Composable.
• To begin with, we need to draw the gradient and then animate it.

fun Modifier.animatedGradient(
 primaryColor: Color,
 containerColor: Color
): Modifier = composed {

val colors = listOf(
  primaryColor,
  containerColor,
  primaryColor
 )

  background(
      brush = Brush.linearGradient(
          colors = colors
  ),
  shape = RoundedCornerShape(24.dp)
 )
}

• primaryColor is the main color in the gradient animation.
• containerColoris the secondary color, It will serve as a backdrop for our animation.
• Because animatedGradient is an extension Modifier we can access all the operators inside, we will use the background operator and bind the Brush.linearGradientas it’s painted.
• Lastly, we will assign RoundedCornerShape to our background; feel free to adjust the value of the radius, Similar to the Gemini animation I made it 24.dp

⚠️ Note: primaryColor and containerColorshould differ from your screen’s background — Anything that can make a good contrast.

Animating the gradient 🪄

Grandient Animation Modifier

Let’s break the code

• We will track the screen width using the declaredsize state value, I will be updated with the Screen/View width thanks to onGloballyPositioned operator.
• Our transition will be Infinite to keep the loading animating running; something like theProgressBar.
• colors is a list to represent the gradients, the color ordering is important here!

listOf(
primaryColor,
containerColor,
primaryColor,
)

📝 After extensive experimentation, this color sequence closely resembles the Gemini gradient. Feel free to innovate with different orders and shades, and share the results in the comments section. ✨

• Thanks to the extension function animateFloat we can pass the desired start and end, and it will take care of repeating the animation infinitely and return a state offsetXAnimation(State<Float>)to apply to our LinearGradient.
• Because the animation is happening on the x-Axis, SoinitialValue will be -width which means, go outside the screen to the left until the distance is width .
• The targetValueopposite in direction but the same in distance meaning, go outside the screen to the right unit the distance is width .
• animationSpec will take repeating the animation for us, with a bunch of experimentation, I found 1500 milliseconds, and LinearEasing animation looks very similar to Gemini’s animation.
• Lastly, we will modify the static linearGradient to make use of the offsetXAnimation value, As we mentioned before, it takes two offsets.
  - Start: The coordinates where the gradient will start spreading.
  - End: The coordinates where the gradient will stop spreading.
• the Offset is a representation of a point in space (X as the horizontal point and Y as the vertical point)
• Now We can animate the spreading of the gradient by assigning offsetXAnimation as part of the X value.
• Going back to our diagram in Figure 1, We only care about the X-points
• The x-axis Equation: At any point in the animation the gradient start will be offsetXAnimation value itself, and will end at offsetXAnimation + width.
• The y-axis Equation: Y will remain normal meaning, it will start at point 0 and end at the screen height

Now Our modifier is ready to be used, Let’s create a simple layout and animate it with our animatedGradient Modifier 🎉

Gemini Gradient Loading Animation

• I extract the primary and container colors from the animation.
• Then created 3 Box Composables taking the same look as the three bars in the Gemini animation

Here is how it looks 🕺✨

When running on an emulator

Going the extra mile 🏃🏻

Having recreated Gemini’s animation, let’s explore other ways to customize it.

Material You Adoption 🎨

Since our Modifier accepts colors as arguments, imagine using colors from the Material You scheme, which respects both Dark and Light modes.

To adopt our code for Dark Mode, we will change the color parameters to reflect a suitable style with darker accents 🧑🏻‍💻

Dark Mode

Material You Dark mode example

We changed the primary and container colors to the colors from MaterialTheme.colorScheme. Experiment with different theme colors depending on your preferences. I found secondary and tertiary colors fitting for Dark mode.

Here is how it looks. ✨

Dark mode using Material You colors

PS: Google already used the material colors scheme for similar loading animation in their Gemini integration in Google Docs 😎

Gemini integration in Google Docs loading animation

Light Mode

Material You Light mode example

I chose onTertiaryContainer and primary for light mode.

Here is how it looks. ✨

Light mode using Material You colors

Experimenting 🧪

• Easing: Further optimize the animation by adjusting the easing. Jetpack Compose offers several built-in methods, such as FastOutSlowInEasing, LinearOutSlowInEasing, and FastOutLinearInEasing. I chose LinearEasing to illustrate the animation, but feel free to try other techniques and share your findings. 👀
• Duration: Another important aspect of animation is its duration. Adjust this to suit your needs; Usually, a good duration ranges from 1000 to 2000 milliseconds.
• Color sequence: Experiment with the order to control how the gradient looks and its dominant color, such as switching between
  - containerColor -> primaryColor -> containerColor (primaryColor is dominant).
  - primaryColor -> containerColor -> primaryColor(containerColor is dominant).

Thank you!

I appreciate your time and interest. 🙏

I’ve shared the complete source code for each example in a GitHub gist.
https://gist.github.com/ahmed3elshaer