Android 10 and the BACK button

[Spiralpine]

Android 10 has new gesture support. One of those gestures eliminates the soft back button of the phone (at the bottom of the home screen) and relies on the apps to have their own native soft back button. I noticed, for example, keepass2android keyboard setting screen does not have the soft back button. In this case, if you navigate to that screen, you are stuck and the only way to go back is to kill the app and start over. I did not examine all keepass2android screens to see if another screen might be missing the soft back button or not, but they all should.

On Edit: More screens lack the soft "Back" button

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• Settings\App\Log-File for Debugging
• Settings\Plug-ins
• Settings\About

[Karreg]

Android 10 has a Back gesture by side sliding either on left or right, so you can live until there's a back button everywhere :)

What a disaster this gesture thing...

[Spiralpine]

I understand that. But in the scenario I've described the side sliding to the left or right takes you to the next app, that's not what is intended here. What's intended here is to go back to the previous screen of KP2A. The point I'm raising is that all screens within KP2A should be consistent to offer the soft back button. At least one screen, the one identified in my notes, is missing the soft back button. There might be more.

Also, I like the new gesture mode very much :-)

[Karreg]

I'm not discussing the issue, I'm giving you a workaround until it is solved :)

Also, what you describe is not the standard gestures of Android 10. App switching is done by up sliding first, then side sliding, so that's weird.

Also, it's not the point of liking gestures or not, it's the point of ergonomy, and replacing direct actions by indirect actions, just to have a maximized display. All on the look (and on forcing to use Google Assistant), no matter the regression in ergonomy. See it as if your web browser was always in fullscreen mode... You may like it, there's no harm in that. But it's not the easier to use. Neither in term of efficiency or in term of intuitivity. Thus it's an ergonomy failure...

Sorry about discussing something that is not the point here though, it's just that the gesture stuff gets me mad. And I'm happily using the gesture mode on my OnePlus 6T. But I understand it's less efficient and even blocker in some use cases...

[Spiralpine]

As I indicated before I'm aware of the workaround. The basis for the filing this issue is to request consistency for all KP2A screens in providing the soft back buttons. Not all of the screens do. At least in the case of the screen I had mentioned originally the soft back button is missing. That's all :-)

[lizardb0y]

I don't understand this issue. Android 10 has replaced the OS level "back" soft button with a "back" gesture. To go back from any of these screens you use the back gesture. Apps are not expected to have a back button. Implementing a back button in the app itself is a regression and not desirable.

This isn't a workaround. It's the way it's supposed to work.

[Spiralpine]

@lizardb0y "Android 10 has replaced the OS level "back" soft button with a "back" gesture."

If you set your Android 10 System Navigation to "Gesture navigation", the back gesture you are talking about does not take you back to the previous "screen" of the app, instead it takes you back to the previous "app" running in the background. Furthermore, it's nice for KP2A be consistent. Some K2PA screens have soft back button, some don't.

BTW, and if that helps, I'm running pure Android 10 on Google Pixel 3 XL.

[lizardb0y]

I am running Android 10 in pure gesture mode. The gesture for"back" is a swipe starting at the far left or right edge of the screen, approximately half-way up the screen vertically, and swiping in a straight line to the other side of the screen.

The gesture for "switch to previous app" starts at the very bottom of the screen, swiping up and then either left or right without lifting your finger.

You're either doing the wrong swipe or running in a non-default configuration. K2A works perfectly with gesture navigation and does not exhibit the "issue" on my device.

[Spiralpine]

@lizardb0y I tried the back gesture as you described after reset/set the gesture configuration. Thanks, it works. So, this is not an issue anymore, rather an enhancement request to have the app back button to be available consistently across all K2PA screens. If that can not be done, then this case can be closed.

[lizardb0y]

@waaweech I'm glad it helped :)