How do I get my phone navbar to hide away again?

December 1, 2018 8:29 PM

I updated my Android (Motorola) phone today to what I presume is the latest version. The update came with a lot of interface changes, and they're all driving me crazy. The biggest change, and the one that worsens my user experience the most, is: my phone used to have the navigation bar automatically hide while using apps (i.e. "immersive mode"). Now, it does not hide, which means I lose about half an inch of vertical space when using Chrome, and things appear asymmetrical if I have the phone in horizontal mode. How can I fix this?

I'm okay with not downgrading, but I'd like to restore this functionality! I'm so baffled by why it would have been removed and I don't understand at all why it's not a toggle at least. How do I re-enable this? I'd prefer to have it enabled at a settings level if possible instead of having an app do it.

posted by LSK to Technology (2 answers total)

Best answer: Same here. We may be out of luck, at least for a while - according to a reply from a Lenovo rep in this forum thread, "Please be advised that Immersive Mode is automatic but it has to be implemented by developers of the apps. The apps have to be designed to auto-hide the on-screen buttons. There is no way for you to manually hide them."

So apparently this happened within each app and many apps haven't "caught up" with implementing this in Android 8.1. Some of my apps (games) do still hide the nav bar, but for some reason a bunch of native Moto and system apps no longer do. I'm definitely gonna complain to Lenovo, hopefully enough people do the same to get them to change it. Other apps may reinstate this with their own future updates.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:43 PM on December 1, 2018

FWIW I never see the navigation bar on my Motorola because I enabled the Moto gesture thing where you use the fingerprint reader to navigate. It takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty great.

(The part of the update that drives me crazy is that overlays don't work on the status bar anymore, so night mode apps now work on 95% of the screen and then the top 5% just glares at you brightly all night. I really don't get how a company as "professional" as Google does such boneheaded shit.)
posted by trig at 12:10 AM on December 2, 2018