Wanted to see how everyone in the community felt about the using the android navigation bar buttons vs using gesture control.
I’ve used the navigation buttons since they released on android and just recently started trying to use the gesture based navigation. It’s been a little difficult for me to adapt to it so far, but curious what others experience has been.
I started using gestures, and haven’t been able to transition away since.
Both have their pros and cons.
It’s especially hilarious when, as a Pixel owner, I try to help my spouse with their iPhone, and I immediately get confused/frustrated when swiping on her phone does nothing.
Same here! My wife gets annoyed, scrolling on my phone and accidentally hitting the “back” gesture. So I guess it goes both ways
I use the nav bar. Never got used to gestures and don’t need them.
I’m interested in using gestures but I’m on a tablet 98% of the time. I even use a tablet for phone calls and SMS. Gestures feel too much like exercise on a bigger screen.
Yes same for me on my Chromebook. Like… no
The back gesture is fine until it takes me out of an app. I hate that. Sometimes I trigger it unintentionally because I’m trying to swipe in an app but the system picks it up instead.
This stopped happening for me once I lowered the back gesture sensitivity all the way. It was a little tedious at first trying to grab the very edge of my screen, but I got used to it pretty quickly
A navigation bar is so simple, so direct, with little room for error.
It was actually painful and annoying for me to try navigating with gestures after updating Android, to the point where I simply disabled them because someone had the right idea to make them default.
Yet, for me this was peak ->
I want physical buttons back.
Gestures solely for the edge swipe to go back. It just makes sense and I can never go back. Plus one-handing big phones with the nav bar is tough
This 100% gestures just feel more fluid for me at this point.
I still prefer the navigation buttons. I just can’t get used to gesture controls
Have been using gesture control since android 10 came out.
I much prefer gestures
Gestures because on-screen buttons just suck for full screen apps. Buttons only work if they’re always in the same place and always available. Why the hell would I want them to be hidden? Give me my hardware buttons back please.
Gestures are only half-way usable because I patch the android framework to ignore apps’ requests to change orientation (fuck that) and the pill to be much smaller but even then landscape is pretty meh with it taking way too much movement to change apps and the pill requiring quite a lot of vertical space that is already very limited.
I tried using gestures multiple times and always went back to 3 button navbar. Back gesture constantly interfered with any kind of side panels and opened apps gesture always triggered the app drawer on my home screen.
Besides navbar is plain faster and offers additional features, like keyboard selector and screen rotation when auto is turned off.
To be honest with you, I was a die hard 3 button fan, and an anti-gesture person (cause iOS vibes). After sometime, it was like the best way to navigate! Can’t go back to 3 buttons ever again. It feels so slow, and choppy.
P.S. If your apps has swipe to left to do X, you should change them for a better experience.
Yeah, I keep running into issues with apps with swipe actions. I don’t want to delete or archive an email if I’m just trying to use the back swipe function!
Used to be a bar person, but at some point it broke on the custom ROM im running for a few updates so i switched. Been using gestures ever since. I like them maybe a lil less because phones are too big, but it feels faster
but at some point it broke on the custom ROM
The life of custom ROM users 😅. I sympathize with you.
I never got on with gestures, the effort of swiping is not worth the additional 5% screen size for me.
Although I will add that the pill navigation with a separate back button that Android 8 or so introduced was by far my favorite back then and I would love to have that back
I like gesture controls on my Pixel. It took me a bit to adjust, too, but now I can’t go back. My biggest gripe is that swiping from the right side of the screen will go back or exit an app instead of letting me go forward (thinking of Chrome specifically). Also, it can be hard to crop images because the gesture area conflicts with the edge of a lot of images.
edit: typo
I started using Pie controls with Paranoid Android back in 2015 and never gave them up. It’s great for muscle memory
Me too! I actually miss Pie controls sometimes. I know 3rd party apps can replicate it but it just not the same. Maybe it was because of the time period.
Here’s the app I use FWIW: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivianuu.pie
I went through a lot of different apps before settling on this one. It’s a perfect recreation and works flawlessly, 100% worth the money if you want Pie controls on stock.
