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.
I still prefer the navigation buttons. I just can’t get used to gesture controls
I use the nav bar. Never got used to gestures and don’t need them.
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.
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
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.
Have been using gesture control since android 10 came out.
Nav bar, gestures are just awkward. Faster to tap than to swipe.
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 much prefer gestures
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I’m so used to gesture control now that I struggle to go back when I need to sort out my mum’s phone for her.
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 (+ way more customization) and works flawlessly. The app is 100% worth the pricetag if you want Pie controls on stock.
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
I still use nav buttons. I really liked apps that had that left slide out drawer (something Google pushed for a while and then quietly abandoned) and I kept navigating elsewhere while trying to pull out the menu drawers, so I went to buttons.
My final cool app with a drawer, rif is fun, is no longer on my phone, so I guess I can switch to navigation gestures… But it would take a lot of getting used to and “what gesture goes where?” (Note that I am particularly bad at remembering this sort of stuff - I’m the type of person who keeps a screenshot of a keybinding map on my second monitor while playing games.)
