Material 3 Expressive for Jetpack Compose

Material 3 Expressive extends Material 3 with spring-based motion, morphable shapes, emphasized type styles, a recoloured baseline palette, and a set of new components. This skill covers the Compose implementation in androidx.compose.material3.

Version gate — verified against material3 1.4.0 and 1.5.0-alpha26 (Aug 2026).

• 1.4.0 (stable, Compose BOM 2026.08.00) exposes almost none of this. MaterialExpressiveTheme, expressiveLightColorScheme(), MotionScheme / MotionScheme.expressive() / MaterialTheme.motionScheme, every *Emphasized type style, Shapes.largeIncreased / extraLargeIncreased / extraExtraLarge, MediumFlexibleTopAppBar / LargeFlexibleTopAppBar / TwoRowsTopAppBar / FlexibleBottomAppBar and VerticalSlider are all declared internal in 1.4.0. Only WideNavigationRail and ShortNavigationBar are public there.
• Everything else in this skill needs 1.5.0-alpha* — toggle buttons, ButtonGroup, SplitButtonLayout, the FAB menu and sized FABs, floating toolbars, wavy progress indicators, loading indicators, menu groups, the expanded search bars, MaterialShapes. In practice: use the alpha BOM or none of this resolves.
• Opt-in: ExperimentalMaterial3ExpressiveApi is itself internal in 1.4.0, so the @OptIn cannot even be written there. From 1.5.0-alpha23 most expressive APIs graduated to stable; on 1.5.0-alpha26 only LoadingIndicator / ContainedLoadingIndicator and MaterialShapes / Morph.toPath / RoundedPolygon.toShape still require it. AppBarWithSearch and the deprecated TopSearchBar need @OptIn(ExperimentalMaterial3Api::class) instead — a different annotation. A redundant opt-in is harmless (an "unnecessary @OptIn" warning).

Examples below are written for 1.5.0-alpha26 and keep the opt-in annotation. For general Compose state/recomposition work prefer android-skills:compose; for non-expressive theming see compose-theming-styles.

Gradle Setup