Hate Android 10/11’s Back Gesture? Here’s How to Replace It

Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

Let me start off by saying that I love Android. I try to keep up with all the major updates/changes that Google releases with each new iteration of Android. So you can imagine my excitement back in 2019 when I heard that Android 10 would have a brand new Gesture Navigation system. Before the debut of Android 10, Google had already taken a stab at switching their old 3-button nav system to a 2-button system with Android 9. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really a full-blown gesture solution like the one Apple had produced for their iPhone X and many people seemed to prefer the original 3-button system. I personally liked the 2-button navigation but was interested to see what Google could come up with to replace it.

After downloading the Android 10 Beta release, I couldn’t wait to try out the new navigation settings. To my dismay, it wasn’t the smooth and polished experience I had hoped it would be. While the new home and recent apps gestures were fun and straightforward enough, I found the back gesture to be a little clunky. Having high hopes for the new gestures, I was willing to give it a shot anyway. I used the gesture navigation for a few months, hoping I would get used to all of the infuriating issues I had with it. Accidental back swipes while scrolling through RSS feeds, accidentally opening menus while trying to use the back gesture, issues opening menus when I actually wanted to, and the accidental archiving of texts and emails in Google Messages and Gmail were just a few of the issues I experienced.

As much as I liked the idea of gesture navigation, with all of these issues, I just couldn’t continue with it. Even after Google attempted to improve the back gesture in Android 11 by adding individual left/right sensitivity settings, I still had all of the same issues. I found myself switching back to 2-button navigation every time I tried the gestures.

So if you are like me and want to use gesture navigation, but hate the back gesture, here is a suggestion for you. Replace it!

How to Replace Android 10/11’s Back Gesture

Step 1. Turn the Gesture Navigation Bar Into a Back Button

To do this, you can download GesurePlus from the Play Store. I am in no way affiliated with this app but have found it to be really useful. GesturePlus lets you customize the gesture navigation bar with a custom single or double-tap action. You can set it to do things like launch Google Assistant, open the camera, open your flashlight, or navigate back. We are going to set it to do the latter. Once you’ve installed the app, make sure your phone is set to gesture navigation and allow GesutrePlus the permissions it asks for. Then all you need to do is go to Actions and set your Single Press action to Back. This will allow you to simply tap the navigation bar whenever you need to go back! Pretty need right?

The next step is going to be disabling the default back gesture. If you have a Samsung device, you can do this within the app. If you don’t have a Samsung device, don’t worry, you can still disable the back gesture by following the next step.

Step 2. Disable the Back Gesture

If you’re familiar with Android’s developer settings and ADB (Android Device Bridge), this step should be pretty easy. All you have to do is run a couple of commands in the command line. If you need to set up ADB on your phone and computer, XDA has a pretty straightforward tutorial on how to do it: How to Install ADB on Windows, macOS, and Linux

Once you have ADB all set up, you can plug your phone into your computer (make sure USB Debugging is enabled) and run the following commands from the Command Prompt/Terminal.

Disable the left swipe gesture:

adb shell settings put secure back_gesture_inset_scale_left 0

Disable the right swipe gesture:

adb shell settings put secure back_gesture_inset_scale_right 0

For me, I had to set the left swipe to -1 instead of 0 to fully disable it:

adb shell settings put secure back_gesture_inset_scale_left -1

That's it! You can now use Android’s gesture navigation with the gesture nav bar as your back button.

If you ever want to re-enable the back gesture, all you have to do is go into your device settings and adjust the sensitivity value for the left and right edge back gestures.