I think there's a setting to bring back the buttons, if you want that.
Settings -> System -> Gestures -> System navigation
Yeah this is what I do. I tried gestures but I really prefer the buttons.
There's two of us! Really the minority in this thread. For me there was no guide so i was extremely confused at first. Then I found it interfered with one of my most used apps that featured similar gestures so I turned it off and never went back.
I'm still using buttons too. I never understood why people would want universal gestures for back and home while using apps that are also controlled by gestures. Just give me the dedicated buttons.
My phone offers gestures but not by default and I've got zero interest. I'm really glad it's an option and I hate all the companies that think they know better than all their users and force their visions on them.
Just stick with the gestures for a week or so. You'll get used to it. Wouldn't want to go back to the button row anymore.
I've tried, it's not for me, I'm always accidentally swiping.
Oh my God, thank you. I hate the gestures. I'm constantly going back when I'm just trying to scroll or turn pages
Definitely try gestures.
Being able to "go back" from a gentle swipe at any height is a blessing for the small hand. The rest of options are really, really intuitive.
Unless you have some mobility issues, you'll never come back after a week.
i've no mobility issues, but i can't stand that back gesture. it interferes with the ability to open drawers; and i can't spam it quickly to get out of a "deep" page in an app
gestures do have pros (for instance, the ability to hold and scroll through recents) but the back gesture just seems straight up worse to me
it interferes with the ability to open drawers
It's funny, but I tried looking around the old Material Design guidelines and I haven't come across any mention of swiping to open a drawer. I know it was on Android Developers, but it appears that from the point of view of the design team, it wasn't really "officially" recommended?
Regardless, Discord, IMO, offers a better implementation for side sheets, as the metaphor isn't that you drag something from beyond the screen into view, you just drag the view itself to the side and that reveals the side sheet. And it works in the middle of the screen so it doesn't interfere with the system gestures
it frequently misfires when I don't want it to and fails to fire when I do. I used it for a couple of months and then went back to buttons after getting frustrated.
Pretty sure you can still enable 3 button navigation in settings. I still use it
I had that for about half an hour, but I wouldn't want to switch back. Gestures all the time
Took me awhile to get used to gesture, but can't go back now. The only thing that still bothers me is the old UX of the slide out side menus was clearly overlooked with gesture navigation and is really awkward.
I'll never forget the day I realized my reddit app (Relay for Reddit) had a drawer that pulled out by just sliding your finger to the right from anywhere on the screen. As long as you didn't slide from the left edge, it pulled the drawer out. Why we don't make that the default is beyond me.
It's possible to adjust it so you have three little buttons but you can also use gestures from those buttons. Not the sides. I used to use that setup for a long time but know I'm just using the regular gestures for now. By the way I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S20.
These settings are samsung specific. Samsung had optional gesture navigation before it was in android. Different gestures though (the 3 button swipe from the bottom option). So nowadays you can choose between the old style samsung gestures, the android gestures and toggle the button row on or off on samsung phones.
initially I didn't like the gesture controls but they really are better than having buttons wasting space and burning in the screen
Can't agree. I thought they sucked. I gave it two weeks but it just felt worse to me.
Is burn-in really an issue? I've never noticed it on any of my OLED devices
I'm so used to gestures I can barely use a phone with button navigation. When I have to help my parents/grandparents with their smartphones I take longer just because they use buttons lol.
Also the 3 button navigation is not gone afaik. All OEMs I've used have it buried in the settings somewhere.
I used a phone without gestures the other day and had such a hard time with it, it was crazy how unintuitive the buttons felt in comparison to the gestures!
The simple fact is, neither is actually all that intuitive, they're learned, but gestures definitely get to be very convenient and a much quicker form of navigation.
I would definitely not want to go back.
It's funny, if you swap gestures with buttons in your post, I'd agree 100% lol
@Vlhacs Yeah, like I said, we call things intuitive without realizing that nothing in this is intuitive at all, it's all learned behavior.
For me now, swiping at the edges of the screen makes complete sense and needing to go to a certain place at the bottom of the phone to go back was weird because "why would I go to the bottom of the screen to go backwards, that doesn't make sense", but it was definitely a learning curve to get to this point!
With all that said, hell, there are still times I really miss the old trackball and full keyboard from the OG G1 (the dedicated hardware button for the camera was nice too, but double tap power isn't terrible). I wouldn't want to give up screen space for the trackball, but damn if it didn't really help with fine navigation and using the phone in the cold!
Different strokes for different folks, I'm just glad we've got options so we can all be (mostly) happy with how things work!
I really wanted to like gestures. I used them for over a year.
Even after all that, switching back bottom navigation immediately felt right.
I loved Android's 3 button nav for years but after like a week of using gestures I couldn't go back. Once I got the hang of it, it was way more fluid feeling to use.
Nah, I love gestures. It's so quick to go back just by swiping left or right.
Haven't used the 3 buttons navigation since 2016 or 2017
I like both but use gestures because I don't want to lose screen space on the bottom. I like full screen apps
gesture navigation is fine for me. but i more want stacking recent tasks back
I prefer gestures. But if you like buttons just go to settings and turn them on.
I don't know about your phone, but there is probably a setting to enable button navigation.
However, I was in similar situation when I bought my phone, I even enabled the buttons at first. Then I thought to try gesture navigation for sometime, and now I love it. It's much easier and faster in most cases.
Gesture all the way
Nah, I jumped to gestures the first chance I did. 3 button navigation is old school, and on large screen devices, it's not good. Gestures have a larger surface area for activation and require less precise input to active. I also use one-handed mode+ of samsung, so I have the entire 3 sides of the screen to activate as desired. They are just that much intuitive and convenient for me.
Try gestures. They get easy after a time. Pro tip: to open hamburger menus tap and hold left edge of screen for 0.5s and pull it out to the right. Works every time and no accidental back swipes.
I really miss the 2 button navigation bar. using the pill to switch between apps felt intuitive. however I don't think I could go back after using gestures.
For me it's the opposite now. My boyfriend still uses the 3 bottom buttons and I am so used to gestures by now that whenever I use his phone I am always a little thrown off. To me it just feels more intuitive to swipe rather than to go to the bottom of the screen to tap a button.
Had the same initial reaction to Pixel. But its really grown on me. The swipe to go back is awesome. Having said that, there is a setting to get the buttons back, in case this doesn't grow on you
It's just too easy to accidentally swipe back. A massive massive flaw in my opinion. The amount of times I catch my self entering a screen scrolling vertically and then accidentally exiting only to lose my place when I return.
Having said that the speed of doing actions has increased for me. It's just the accuracy has decreased at the same time.
You're looking for settings --> navigation bar
Just changed back to buttons thanks to a comment on this post. I had been using gestures since I got my new Pixel mid-July (since my carrier stopped supporting the 3a and gave me a 6a for $50). Never got used to it, constantly kept accidentally swiping to go back while doing other things.
This isn't quite as good as the 3a, which had buttons for back and home, but swipe up for the app switcher, but it's definitely better than 100% gestures
I very quickly got used to the gesture controls, and now appreciate the extra screen space.
I switched to "drag up" nav bar as soon as OLED and burn-in became a thing. So technically I was already "gesturing" before gestures were integrated :3
Once proper gestures came in, after the initial learning period, I never looked back!
Just use the standard navigation bar
Past two phones I've had (Galaxy Z fold 3 and OnePlus 7 Pro) I've had the option for gestures or buttons.
I always pick gestures, I get more screen real estate and the gestures feel good and intuitive.
If you don't like them, change it, that's the benefit of Android, you can do what you want.
Not to mention how often the on screen navigation buttons would just burn in. There'd be a permanent outline where they normally are if you were to view any full screen media.
Definitely made sure to enable gesture navigation on my current phone and that hasn't been a problem.
Fuck gestures! And people, can't you understand other people like buttons instead of gestures? If you don't have an answer to what OP asked, why bother to "give advice"?
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