Here’s how Android P’s iPhone X style Navigation Gestures will work

Last week, Google published a blog post outlining Android P‘s new private DNS feature. However, the company inadvertently included a screenshot that showed off a bizarre navigation bar with a missing recent apps button and a pill-shaped home button. This was believed to be a navigation bar redesign to accommodate Android P’s new iPhone X style gestures. At the time, we didn’t have much information about it beyond those screenshots, but now 9to5 is claiming to have uncovered more information about what the gestures will look like and how it’ll work.

Multitasking

According to the publication, you’ll be able to swipe up on the pill-shaped home icon to access the recent apps screen. The recent apps screen itself has been changed to better fit gesture navigation as it’ll now be a horizontal carousel rather than a vertical one. The behavior in the recent apps screen remains the same—you just change the direction in which you swipe. That means you swipe up to dismiss and left-right to scroll through the apps list.

Home Button

Unlike the iPhone X or the OnePlus 5T’s navigation gesture system, you won’t swipe up from the pill icon to go home. Instead, you simply tap the pill icon to go home. This is interesting because it means that the old behavior is still there, and you can even access the device’s default assistant by long-pressing on the home button this way.

Back Button

Unfortunately, 9to5 couldn’t elaborate on how the new back button would work. Judging by the inadvertently-posted screenshot above, it’ll still be there in some capacity. According to them, the back button will disappear in certain situations such as when idling on the home screen.

Renders

Here are renders of what the interface will look like. As you can see, the new recent apps screen consist of a horizontally-scrollable carousel rather than the vertical cards list. Just for kicks, the artist also included the new Google Pixel 2018’s Pixel Launcher revamp that we uncovered.

Renders of Android P’s new navigation gestures. Source: 9to5Google

If we learn more information about the new gestures, we’ll let you know. Google will likely unveil this feature at Google I/O, so stay tuned to our coverage of the event!