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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    32 years ago

    If you own a recent Samsung device, definitely try One Hand Operations app - takes gesture navigation to a whole another level. One of my favourite apps.

    • XepherOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      12 years ago

      I do. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll take a look

  • oranki
    link
    fedilink
    English
    372 years ago

    I started using gestures, and haven’t been able to transition away since.

    Both have their pros and cons.

    • odaat1998
      link
      fedilink
      62 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]M
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Same here! My wife gets annoyed, scrolling on my phone and accidentally hitting the “back” gesture. So I guess it goes both ways

  • KingJalopy
    link
    fedilink
    English
    32 years ago

    I use edge gestures for gesturing but I keep the 3 button on the screen just in case. I like both.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    132 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      62 years ago

      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

  • Atemu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    82 years ago

    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.

  • Hildegarde
    link
    fedilink
    English
    32 years ago

    Gesture navigation is good enough for me to use, but bad enough to be infuriating.

    Its better than the navigation buttons, because non-tactile buttons are bad generally. Gesture navigation lets you navigate basic system interactions without looking at the screen, but its badly implimrnted. A horizontal swipe often accidentally becomes a back.

    A physical set of navigation buttons would be best, but gestures is a solid second place, C tier navigation system.

  • Bebo
    link
    fedilink
    English
    102 years ago

    Have been using gesture control since android 10 came out.

  • ryan
    link
    fedilink
    32 years ago

    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.)

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 years ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    4
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    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

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    42 years ago

    Once I got used to gesture controls in android 10 I never looked back. It was hard to adapt but now it’s muscle memory.