The new look for model driven Power Apps is available now in preview

“Today, we’re announcing a public preview of the new model driven app experience and providing an update on new controls coming to canvas apps in the spring timeframe.

Before driving into the details on what the new model driven app experience brings, I want to provide some context about the enhancements and our plans for Power Apps experiences.”

• The new model driven app experience
• Clearer design, optimized for action
• Enhanced Sharing experience, integrated with Teams
• Edit records inline through enhanced grid
• Turning on the preview of the new look

The new look for model driven Power Apps is available now in preview | Microsoft Power Apps

How to enable the feature

The modeldriven apps just got a design overhaul improving both forms and views in your apps.

Simply try it out by going to the "app settings", choose" upcoming" and enable "try the new look and feel".

You will see a much cleaner interface impacting the command bar, form sections and the fields in general.

Comments from Jukka

Model-driven #PowerApps are finally going Fluent with the next Release Wave.

Now available in public preview, you can enable a setting in your app module to switch the UI into using the “modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps”.

The visual changes aren’t actually as drastic as I expected. In the previous release wave we already got the “Windows 11” look with rounded corners and a bunch of tiny tweaks. This new version coming in 2023 Release Wave 1 seems to be a steep in a good direction from a clarity perspective, with slightly more contrast between different controls.

Behind the scenes this is all about letting go of the legacy controls of the Unified Interface and replacing (almost) everything with Fluent UI controls. Once this is done, there will be the possiblity to make Power Apps (and Dynamics 365 CE apps) look and behave the way Teams and other #Microsoft365 apps created on #FluentDesign already do. Theming support and dark mode have at least been publicly stated as being under work.

The one undocumented feature gap I noticed with this preview is that it will remove any Nav Bar theme colors set in your app and reset them to the default provided by MS. The current theming features were introduced in pre-UCI era of Dynamics CRM 2015, then gradually dropped for the most part, aside from the custom logo and Nav Bar color. Now only the logo remains - until the new capabilities are launched, I presume.

According to Microsoft, “the pages included in this initial launch cover 70% of scenarios in use today.” This means there’s plenty of legacy UI elements to be discovered even after enabling the modern look. Just like with every UI update in the history of XRM/Model-driven Power Apps, there’s seemingly never enough time nor budget for MS to modernize the entire end-user facing client application.

The quickes way to take a user down the CRM memory lane is for them to click on “personalization settings”. Well hello there, Dynamics CRM 2011!