How to Hide Navigation Bar in Samsung One UI

For years, we’ve had standard navigation buttons – Home, Back, and Multitasking, for navigating Android. Google switched to pill-based gesture navigation with Android 9 and changed it again to full-screen gestures in Android 10. Phone makers are also following Google’s lead in implementing the changes on their devices. For example, Samsung implemented full screen gestures in One UI. But all Galaxy devices still come with an old navigation bar with Home, Back, and Multitasking buttons at the bottom.

Fortunately, the company offers a customization option to hide the navigation bar and revert to Android 9 or Android 10 gestures in Samsung One UI.

The behavior makes sense for Samsung. The company sells more than 300 million smartphones each year. A major change in operating system navigation may not be easy for all users. And that’s exactly why the company gives you so many options to customize the navigation bar in a single user interface.

In this article, we are going to talk about how to hide the standard navigation bar in Samsung One UI and use other gesture based navigation to spice up the experience. Let’s start.

Default navigation settings in Samsung One user interface

All Samsung Galaxy phones, including the M, A, S, and Note series, have standard navigation buttons below the screen. The back button is on the right side, multitasking on the left, and the home button is placed in the middle.

You might want to check out Samsung’s take on Android 10 gestures in Settings. It provides better experience and provides more screen for the user.

Hide the navigation bar and switch to gestures

True to Samsung’s style, the gesture navigation menu is full of customization. Follow the steps below to make the changes.

Step 1: Open the Settings app on your Samsung device.

2nd step: Scroll to and tap the View menu.

Step 3: Access the menu from the navigation bar.

Step 4: Here you will see the default button order for the navigation bar.

Step 5: You can change the order of the buttons and change the position of the Back and Multitasking buttons. This can be useful for those coming from Android Stock or other Android devices as Samsung uses the reverse button position in One UI relative to others.

Step 6: Tap full screen gestures.

The option will hide the standard navigation bar in One UI and switch to full screen gesture mode. You will see a small bar at the bottom for guidance. Let me walk you through how fullscreen gestures work in One UI.

• Swipe up from the bottom to get home
• Swipe to each side to go back
• Slide your middle finger up and hold to open the multitasking menu
• Swipe up from one of the lower corners to trigger the Google Assistant

Samsung also allows you to change the sensitivity of back gestures. Open the Settings app and go to Display> Navigation bar> Full screen gestures> More options and change the sensitivity of back gestures.

Users can also hide gesture tips from the navigation bar menu.

The major problem with Android 10 gestures is that the Back gesture does not work well with the hamburger menu of many Android apps. Google encourages developers to implement the lower menu bar for navigation in applications. However, thousands of Android apps still use the hamburger menu, confusing users in navigation.

Sometimes when you try to open the hamburger menu it takes it as a return gesture and exists the app user. Samsung also has a solution to this problem.

Use the bottom navigation gestures

Swiping from the bottom of the navigation is my favorite implementation of Android gestures. It’s a good mix of Android 9 Pie and Android 10 gestures. Follow the steps below to make changes.

Step 1: Open the Settings app on your Samsung device.

2nd step: Go to View> Navigation bar> Full screen gestures> More options> Swipe from bottom.

The option will hide the navigation bar and show you the navigation bar indication at the bottom. Swipe up from the middle to go home, swipe left to right to go back, and swipe up to open a multitasking menu. You can also swipe up to open the Google Assistant app.

Gesture in one-handed mode

Samsung offers one-handed mode in One UI. This is useful on large smartphones because the mode minimizes the display and allows you to use it with one hand.

With the standard navigation button, you can triple-tap the home button to activate one-handed mode.

When switching to full screen gestures, you can slide your finger down the center of the bottom edge of the screen to activate one-handed mode.

Use navigation gestures in the Samsung One user interface

Critics often criticize Samsung for offering too many customization options in One UI. But ultimately, it’s consumers who have more options to make changes to the overall experience. If you’ve recently bought a new Samsung phone, try the navigation gestures and see if it’s right for you.