Google Releases Android Q Beta 5 With Changes to Gestural Navigation

Google is continuing to make changes to the brand-new gestural navigation system in Android Q. The company released beta 4 of Android Q last month, finalising things like the APIs, but it’s making some major changes to the navigation system with the latest beta.

More specifically, Google is introducing a new gesture for accessing Google Assistant with the new gestural navigation system. Now, users can access the Assistant by swiping up from the bottom of the left or right corners. Google says the company is making these changes to “improve and polish” the gestural navigation experience based on user feedback.

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The company is also changing the way navigation drawers can be accessed in apps to make sure it doesn’t conflict with the new swipe-to-go-back in the new gestural navigation system. It has added a peek behaviour that makes sure that the gesture to open navigation drawers and the gesture to go back do not conflict.

But here’s the big change: Google is making it so third-party launchers don’t work with the new gestural navigation system. The company said that in beta 6, Google will automatically switch to the classic 3-button navigation system when users are using a third-party launcher. It will then introduce a post-launch update for Android Q that allows all users to use the new gestural navigation.

You can get the Android Q beta 5 here. 

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  • Jorge Garcia

    10 July, 2019 - 2:46 pm

    <p>OT but since we're kind of talking about Android's domination here…on a Microsoft focused website…If I were Microsoft (and the world is lucky I'm not, I know), I would ship ALL computers in 2019 with 2 (2.5, actually) different Microsoft OS's. The first out-of-the box would literally be a licensed fork of Android that looks very MicroSoft-y, but runs Android Apps just as one would expect, but in forced landscape. You don't need to switch the machine over to ARM to do this, but I personally would for my consumer-facing products. This interface would work fine in tablet mode, but would upset many people looking for a little better multitasking with the keyboard and mouse connected, so that's when you'd be prompted to go into the settings (or notification shade) and turn "on" desktop interface. It would still be Android, but it would operate a whole lot like Windows…no different than Samsung DeX or PrimeOS already do. Nobody on earth would think it was "real" Windows though, so you wouldn't have the Windows RT confusion problem. Then, for those who really need to run "real" software…there would be an option to dual boot into a full copy of Windows 10 or WOA 10. That would be the ideal 2-in-1 computer to me.</p>

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