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In Android 8.1, status bar icons have width padding at the far corners of the status bar (as seen from after.png).

Before, the status bar icons did not have any padding and would take up any reasonable space at the sides (seen from before.png).

This doesn't look nice at all on phones which do not have curved corners. Instead, it makes the UI look compressed. I know this change is for phones which have curved corners, which are becoming more the norm (like the Pixel 2 XL, Galaxy S8) but this change doesnt take into account how terrible it is on phones with sharp corners, and besides, its a waste of space.

I don't get why it was added.
If it's only because of rounded corners devices, like the Pixel 2 XL and some other new devices, this should be based on the display itself. Probably have an API telling that the device has rounded corners, including what space they take out of the full rectangle that the screen is supposed to take.

In any case, there is no reason to add this padding to normal screens as well.
I don't like rounded corners screens, because they take space for no reason out of the screen (same as notches), preventing content from being shown the way it's supposed to be shown. But at least don't force me to have useless space because of them, on normal screens.

In short, it should be based on screen, and set by the OS based on what's known about the screen.
It can also be nice to be able to emulate the rounded corners (in developer options, for demo purposes), to take screenshots that are meant to show how it looks on rounded corners screens.

For anyone who wants, here's a temporary workaround for this annoyance:
https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-2-rounded-screen-corners/

In short, it's :

./adb shell settings put secure sysui_rounded_size 0.0
./adb shell settings put secure sysui_rounded_content_padding 0.0

Sadly, this doesn't seem to work on Nexus 5x. It even caused the system to crash.

We have passed this to the development team and will update this issue with more information as it becomes available.

We have deferred this to a future release, but leaving the bug open for now.

Issue introduced on 8.1 for my Pixel XL.

Starred, but I wanted to add that this padding seems to have added to the navigation bar as well. Attached is a screenshot of a button I added to the navigation bar - you can see the button highlight clipping farther away from edge of the screen.

We will be closing this bug due to being logged in a Preview version of Android. If the issue is still relevant and reproducible in the latest public release (Android Q), please capture a bugreport and log the bug in https://goo.gl/TbMiIO. If a reply is not received within the next 14 days, this issue will be closed. Thank you for your understanding.