Android Q could bring revamped iPhone-like gestures, ability to remap Active Edge squeeze

Highlights: Android Q will offer revamped gesture navigation that imitates the iPhone a tad too much. The new gestures do away with the annoying two-step access to the app drawer. Even the squeeze gesture can be remapped to launch an assistant other than Google Assistant.   Google received a lot of flak from Android enthusiasts about the gesture navigation on Android 9 Pie, especially the swipe up gesture that showed recently accessed apps instead of the app drawer. Google may have taken note of the problem and plans to address it by adopting iPhone-like gestures on Android Q. A senior member from XDA Developer forums discovered hidden flags in the stock Pixel Launcher APK that enables new gestures for navigation. The new gestures can be accessed by Developer Options on the stock Pixel launcher APK. This is different from the Developer Options in the Settings app. In there, you have access to a set of new settings to control a new gesture called QuickStep. This is the recent app gesture of Android Pie and in the Android Q beta. The new gesture makes the transition animation when switching apps more smoother. Swiping left on the navigation will switch to the previous task while swiping up will go home. Swipe up and holding will show the recent apps while swiping up on the navigation bar from the home screen will throw up the app drawer. Furthermore, swiping down from anywhere in the home screen will bring up the notification panel. The swipe gestures definitely sound similar to what iOS offers. However, Google is still keeping the back button as of now. While it’s not clear these are the new changes Google is exploring in Android Q, it definitely looks like the company will working hard under the hood to make the operating system much smoother. You can try out the new navigation gestures by downloading a Magisk module from here. You will need a Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL with Android Q Beta installed. The phone also has to be rooted using Magisk. The Android Q Beta also offers a way to remap the ActiveEdge squeeze to launch another assistant. Once again discovered by XDA members, the Android Q beta has a hidden ADB option called “secure assist_gesture_any_assistant”. When the option is enabled, squeezing the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL will launch an assistant of your choice. The default app can include Alexa, Cortana and even Firefox. Earlier, squeezing the edges only launched Google Assistant even if the default assistant was mapped to another app. Both of these two features aim at making Android Q more seamless in terms of usability. The gestures on Android 9 Pie always seemed half-baked while the inability to remap the squeeze feature was plain annoying. Thankfully, the upcoming new Android version promises change, in a good way. Related Reads: Android Q Beta 1 released for all Pixel smartphones: An indepth look at new features

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