Gesture Navigation

Android 10 offers users yet another option for system navigation, such as “home” and “back” actions. The particular implementation — edge swipe gestures — may cause problems for users with some Android apps.

A Tale of Three (or More) Nav Patterns

Way back in the beginning, navigation actions were handled by hardware buttons. Android 3.0 introduced the notion of a “navigation bar” for handling “home”, “back”, and “overview” navigation actions, leading to the classic three-button bar:

Android 9.0 added another option for users: a two-button nav, where “home” and “overview” actions were handled by gestures on a central pill affordance:

Android 10 adds a new nav option that is based on gestures:

Action	Associated Gesture
Home	swipe up from bottom screen edge
Back	swipe inward from the screen edge on left or right
Overview	swipe up from the bottom screen edge and hold

Users can choose among those three by visiting Settings > System > Gestures > “System navigation”:

The user can choose between gesture-based nav, the Android 9.0 button-and-pill option, or the classic three-button nav option. Note, though, that not all users will have access to all of those options. Pixel 4 users, for example, cannot choose the two-button nav option.

On top of this, some device manufacturers have created their own gesture-based nav options. Device manufacturers will be allowed to continue coming up with their own schemes for this, meaning that a user might have three or four navigation options on Android 10 devices.