is anyone else bothered by the lack of the 3 buttons at the bottom
So i just bought Asus rog phone 6d and im extremely bothered by the lack of the back ,home and whatewer is the 3 one called buttons on the news androids. Is this something you all got used to with time or does this still bother you( IT really fells much less intuitive compared to the old 3 buttons ,alghtough preferably i would love to have both since the back gesture seems kinda usefull )?
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.
Yeah, totally this! Also, I'm just super uncoordinated and I was constantly swiping in slightly the wrong direction so it never did what I wanted it to do. You know where you stand with a button đ
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.
Same for me, I think there are a lot of us đ
I just haven't been able to get use to gestures instead of the buttons.
Hello fellow cat! Correction fellow lazy cat
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Oh my God, thank you. I hate the gestures. I'm constantly going back when I'm just trying to scroll or turn pages
Just upgraded my phone and found this setting myself. Thank god you can change it back to the 3 buttons.
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'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
i found this: https://web.archive.org/web/20140110123608/developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation-drawer.html (alternative link in case archive.org is down) - i presume they removed it from the old spec when they introduced the gesture navigation, so people don't use it because it interferes with the gestures?wait never mind i misread this paragraph. i presume it wasn't in the design spec as a) it's an interaction behaviour, not a visual design behaviour, and b) it was also a thing in holo design (& older[?]), so they didn't consider it part of the "material design spec"?
it's not a bad idea if you're working around gestures, but it means you can't have something where you swipe between tabs when not from the edge, and get the drawer when from the edge
or, for example, swiping to reply/forward in a messaging app, or upvote/downvote on a lemmy client
(also, subjectively, it's kind of a bit ugly)
Yesn't. Material Design 1 and 2 guidelines have a bunch of sections regarding interaction, way more than M3 (although M3 guidelines aren't "finished" yet), but they lack a section regarding that gesture in particular.
Like, M1 guidelines mention swiping on content to swap tabs, heck, you can even find the same on the current Material Design 3 guidelines
I think it was a conscious design decision from the Material Design team to not use that gesture in particular? Because it isn't due to conflict with other components, in the tab guidelines they call attention to be careful when the content itself is swipeable.
I mean, you already can't have certain gestures with other gestures. Like you can't (or shouldn't) have swipe on a card to upvote at the same time you have swipe content to change tabs. I'd argue this restriction is better for the user because with discord's implementation it is very clear what the trigger area is, because the entire view is the trigger area.
fair enough. although in that specific example you could construe that as a warning of unforeseen conflicts, rather than a recommendation to implement swipe gestures. like, it doesn't say "use swipe gestures for navigating between tabs", it just mentions it as though it's something the dev should already know (in the m1 guidelines, not m3 i guess)
possibly? although i still maintain it's likely that they saw it as part of holo, so there was no need to respecify it for md^?^ the same that they don't specify that you can scroll down to move the content field^?^ especially as all of google's own apps supported that gesture
yes; but my point is that it reduces the available actions for no discernible benefit. it's not like they've added some spare buttons in the old place, like maybe bringing back the old universal menu button.
maybe? i'm not sure about that though, as the hamburger button is on that side, and the drawer appears there; and i'd say "the edge from whence the drawer appears" is a lot clearer than "just any old fucking where", but maybe that's me
Alright, but wasn't the tab gesture also available on the holo era?
The benefit is less conflicting gesture triggers occupying the same area. A swipeable card/list-item has the entire card/list-card as the visible trigger. A Tab has the entire content as the trigger area. The Navigation Drawer gesture is an invisible area that can be placed on top of the visible triggers of other components.
The issue is that the hamburger button is not the only button that can appear in that that place, a back button is common on that same area. The trigger area isn't the width of a button, but the width of a very specific button, and worse, it extends far beyond the edges of the button and shares the same height as the screen.
I do see your point that "anywhere" isn't an improvement, but I have to disagree, as that is fundamentally the same gesture to swap tabs, and you can predict the area trigger as being "just any old fucking where".
honestly i couldn't say with absolute certainty, but i don't think so?
i'm not entirely sure that i'm following this correctly, but assuming i am: it's the same number of gesture triggers
that's a fair criticism
this i'm also not sure what you're saying? it seems like a good thing to me - it takes up no space, and can be accessed from any height
i wasn't strictly saying that, i was more refuting what i thought your point was: that "it's not a discoverable gesture unless it's tutorialised, because most people won't randomly swipe in from the edge"; which i think in most instances is a very fair point, but in this specific instance i think it is discoverable because the drawer pulls in from the side. (source: i discovered it without a tutorial, or reading the md docs)
I'm not talking about the number of gesture triggers or their discoverability, but rather, their predictability. System Gestures are always on, no matter the screen, the area is defined despite being "invisible". The way it is on top of whatever app is currently on screen makes sense.
A swipe to change tab has the entire content as a "visible trigger", i.e. the gesture will work on any area that is visibly part of the content.
A swipe on cards/list-item (to reply, delete, etc...) has the card/list-item as the trigger area, it is visibly defined.
A swipe from the edge to open a side sheet has a trigger area that extends far beyond the confines of the Hamburger Icon. And if any of the other gestures are present, then the edge gesture conflicts with them. Even worse is, the gesture with no visible area is "on top" of the others that have a predictable area, despite the fact that they exist on the "same plane".
System gestures also don't have a visible area, but again, they work regardless of the current app, and are "on top" of apps. So despite the fact that they also conflict with the other gestures, because they are drawn on top, it doesn't feel as wrong as the side sheet edge gesture.
Like, with the edge gesture to open a drawer, you need to keep the app elements in mind as if there is some physical elevation inside the app. The edge gesture is on top of the tab gesture, and things like that.
With the system gesture, the elevation itself is between the app and the system. Almost like if the system gestures are a glass panel on top of the app. It is a predictable rule.
ah, i see. in that case i can't say i agree. i'd say that it's fairly predictable - i can't think of a single app with a drawer in which it didn't work, until they introduced gesture navigation and broke it.
with a back button, it's always in the same corner; with a back gesture what happens when the phone is rotated? (i genuinely don't know) does it stay on the side it was on, or does it move so it's now on the left? wouldn't that make it very hard to reach with one hand?
yes, but it doesn't extend beyond the confines of the drawer. in my head it's more like the drawer is always there, and you can trigger it with the hamburger, or "drag" it into view manually
not really - one is from the edge, one is not. it doesn't conflict any more than scrolling up conflicts with the new home gesture (and is far less often accidentally triggered)
that is reasonable. i can't say anything to refute that
i mean yeah, that's the very point of material design. the whole spec goes on and on about the information conveyed by implied depth
but even before that, drawers and menus usually had some type of drop shadow to imply depth (practical skeuomorphism at work^!^)
yeah, i subjectively don't like that. with nav buttons and a status bar, that's where the system was and that's how you interact with it. now it's an invisible layer over the whole screen that's not predictable at all; as a swipe right goes back, but a diagonal swipe does something else. that's two gestures on the same metaphorical "layer", one a system action and one an app action. weird.
I made it implicit, but forgot to say out loud: While system gestures makes the open-drawer-edge-gesture worse to the point of unusable, I think that looking back it wasn't that good to begin with. Which is why I think Material Design never officially supported it in the first place, way before gesture navigation was a thing.
The pill-thingy is anchored to the bottom of the screen, so basically it always point to the ground, the back gesture is on the side. It isn't uncomfortable because it matches the easiest point to reach, which is the side of the screen relative to the user, not the device. This very old image shows the most reachable areas of a screen:
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/1*9IDju9_qkRNyKpueLBhkgg.png
That is fair. However, the drawer isn't visibly always there.
It is a bit funny that the design system designed to resemble real life materials didn't really accept that metaphor. Besides, my point was that the gesture itself was implying physicality, you could move the content to swap between tabs, but the gesture was 1:1 with the content. With a drawer you weren't moving the drawer into view, you were reaching a glass handle that was glued to the drawer. Either that, or you were reaching into the realm beyond the screen to bring it on. That is something that I never quite liked for app gestures, because not only is it implied that things exist outside the screen(which is fine), but that you can somehow reach for them.
Erm, there is no diagonal swipes, at least officially from Google. You just swipe perpendicular to the edge of the screen. So from the bottom edge you swipe up, from the left edge you swipe right, right edge to the left
i mean, i'd say it's better than nothing. otherwise one has to reach all the way up to the top to press the hamburger menu
that doesn't seem hugely ergonomic - i can hardly reach the bottom middle of my phone, let alone the left edge
well yeah, it's this exactly. your finger starts from off-screen, where the drawer is currently hanging out, and drag it on-screen. almost exactly the same as the notification drawer, the control centre on ios, or that stupid "charms" thingy on win8
i thought that was how one opened nav drawers with gestures enabled? a diagonal swipe; or swipe, wait, then swipe a bit more (which i'm not even going to go into how awful that is). including in official google apps?
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.
You just made me try it out, it's... Interesting. Hard to get used to, but I like the extra screen space.
Give it a week. You shortly will not go back.
Unfortunately, I will in fact unintentionally go back every 5 seconds because it always misfires.
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.
Interesting. I assumed it was an Android feature rather than Samsung.
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 remember it is especially intuitive when it goes full screen in landscape mode, like I think it needs one swipe and then choosing the needed button (it is better to swipe twice) or deal with the space occupied by the Android buttons on the right edge of your screen... iugh.
I jumped to the Android bandwagon later (2020) and as I came from iOS I never used them, but I tried them anyway... And they are not for me...
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
maybe not these days
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 really wanted to like gestures. I used them for over a year.
Even after all that, switching back bottom navigation immediately felt right.
Nah, I love gestures. It's so quick to go back just by swiping left or 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.
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
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.
These tips are very helpful! Thanks. Any others?
Not that i can think of atm.
A diagonal swipe also works.
Oh, i havent tried that. Thanks for the tip
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.
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
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.
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 can adjust the gesture sensitivity
Not enough it seems. Still a huge false positive rate. Made worse by horizontal lists in a lot of apps. Developers are supposed to be able to enforce special zones where the gesture isn't recognised allowing for horizontal scrolling but this doesn't seem to be working either.
A poorly implemented feature that takes the ecosystem backwards.
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
You're looking for settings --> navigation bar
I very quickly got used to the gesture controls, and now appreciate the extra screen space.
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"?
Yeah, I'm lucky that I have the option of both gesture or three button nav of which, I still use the latter because it's better for me.
I was big on gestures back in the day with LMT and something I've found with MiuiOS is they now have that with Quick Ball as it's called. It's ace, and also a bit like AOSP Browser side gestures which I also used to use.
Further, slightly off topic ranting? Yes, where I work they currently have an obsession with installing touchscreens on HMI panels to control machinery. Problem is the touch resolution on them is dogshit so peeps end up start trying to use with them with their pens etc and physically damage the screen.
Before these touchscreen "interfaces", we had nice IP68 physical buttons on a Siemens panel that did the very same functions. Sickens me how much they cost for a lower quality interface.
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.
I was about to consider trying this on my phone and then I read your comment and realized my phone is 3 years old and has had the buttons in the same place (portrait) for 95% of the time it's screen has been on and it will 100% have burn in.
Is screen burn in still a problem for modern phones in 2023?
Yup i found the setting. Thank you all. Alghtough i will try to use gestures for a while since i see few comments saying they got used to them,maybe i will also get used to them alghtough i have my doubts( Particulary beacuse i like to move between apps quite often ,quite fast,and thats the worst gesture of them all )
You don't need to go via the task switcher at all with gestures, swipe along the bottom, left or right, instead of up, to go directly to the previous/next app. Much faster than the buttons and the main reason I was excited for gesture, as I'm also a huge mobile multi-tasker.
Ohhh that i did not notice. That changes things quite significantly
Just use the standard navigation bar
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!
Gestures are great and intuitive, definitely give it a bit more time before changing back imo!
I love the gestures themselves. I hate that they "try" to follow device orientation.
It's a guesswork if the screen is rotated or if the media itself is just so. Also i've had multiple cases where the gesturebar is on the portrait bottom but the gestures are on the landscape.
Oneplus did it correct when they had their own gestures. The gestures were always on the same spot regardless of the device orientation. You always knew where they were. Also i think they worked in fullscreen apps without first swiping the gesture bar out.
edit: just wanted to add that i'm on android 12, i don't know if they are less finicky now.
I tried to like gestures it for a few days but had issues so I went back to 3 button
You can still use the 3 button layout but I really wouldn't recommend it. Gestures are quicker and easier.
I prefer gestures but I don't like them - it's too easy to swipe out of an App when you're actually trying to do something else like pull out a side menu or switch along a carousel, or interact with something (e.g. swiping mail away). I tried to reduce the sensitivity of the gestures and then they became too useless.
Unfortunately a lot of apps still aren't designed with gestures in mind (mainly side swipes) and need optimising. Hopefully this will improve over time. I'm guessing carousels in particular are now no long practical in Android.
Gesture nav really bothers while gaming. For the rest, it works fluidly.
I'd recommend a new launcher. Lawnchair is totally free. I personally use Nova Launcher (paid). Both give you the option to have the buttons back.
Lawn chair is great. I used to cling to those 3 buttons, but I got the pixel 7a a few months ago and tried the new gestures and love it. Couldn't imagine going back to the 3 buttons
I'm glad my phone and the ROMs I've used have had the option to switch between the two
Not sure since I don't have the phone, but does this apply? https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1041064/