Take a look at a huge fundamental change to Android navigation
The Android P Developer Preview has transitioned to a proper beta program, and while that means it’s opened up to several devices it also brings a substantial update to the software itself. The biggest visual difference shown off on stage at I/O 2018 is the new gesture navigation paradigm — a replacement for the tried-and-true back/home/recent buttons with a gesture area that’s more flexible and powerful.
But if you install the Android P Beta on your phone, you won’t actually see this new gesture navigation system by default — you have to go enable it to experience this significant change to the way Android works. Follow these steps:
- Open up your phone’s Settings.
- Scroll down and tap on System.
- Find Gestures and tap on it.
- Tap on Swipe up on home button.
- Toggle the switch to on — you’ll notice the navigation buttons change immediately.
Aside from the oddly named and placed settings, that’s a pretty simple process.
So, here’s how the gesture system works:
- You still tap the new elongated “home” button to go home at any time, that doesn’t change.
- When you’re in an app or view that can use a back button, the back button will appear to the left of the home button where you’re used to seeing it.
- Swipe up on the home button and continue swiping to open the app drawer.
- Swipe up on the home button to enter the multitasking view
- Swipe left and right to move the list, and tap to select apps
- Swipe up to remove apps from the list
- Apps in this view are “live” — you can select, copy and paste text while in the multitasking view.
- Swipe right on home button and hold to scroll slowly between apps — release to open the center app.
- Swipe right on home button quickly and release to just switch to the previous app — analogous to a double tap on recents currently.