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.

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. 

Tagged with Android Q