We already looked at some of the enterprise features that Android 11 brings, but there are a lot more tweaks worth seeing. One of them is the new gesture navigation, and we will take a look at it in this article.
Deactivate buttons, activate gestures
In the settings menu, go to System and then tap on Gestures. Under System navigation, you can now choose Gesture navigation to activate the new function. It’s possible though that this menu is somewhere else on your phone, so you might have to look around a bit to find it. Once you toggled the switch, the bottom part of the screen where the navigation buttons are normally located will disappear, and a thin line will appear instead. You can always go back to the traditional 3-way button layout, in case you do not like the new feature.
Go back with a swipe
The best feature is that you can now move back by simply swiping from the left or ride side of the screen. When you do so, a little arrow will appear as a visual support, so you know the gesture was registered. Android also gives you a dedicated settings menu to adjust the sensitivity when navigating back. You can do so from either the left or right side of the screen, which in some cases might interfere with another app. To avoid this, you can select the sensitivity each side.
Swipe up to see all open apps
Super intuitive is the gesture for showing all open apps: Swipe up from the bottom of any screen, and your open apps appear. This is especially helpful for quickly switching between apps or closing them. From that menu, you can now also directly take screenshots. For closing the window, simply swipe down again, and the open apps menu is gone.
That about wraps it up for the gesture navigation on Android 11. Have a look at it yourself and let us know what you think in the comments below.
