Android 13 brought a lot of under-the-hood improvement, and while it surely was not a massive overhaul in terms of looks and design, it was still infinitely better than Android 12 in terms of functionality. One highlight of Android 13 was predictive back, a feature that would remind the users that they are exiting the app by giving visual feedback. Now, with Android 14 on the horizon, Google is working on the feature even further so it can work within the applications and even shows you the previous screen.
Android 14 Should Make the Overall User Experience Even Better as Google Starts Working on the Upcoming OS
The new Android 14 feature was announced during the Developer Summit's Platform Track. The company talked about a term they call "falling," or how the back gesture ends up in “people leaving the app by mistake,” which might seem like a harmless thing but in reality, it does affect the app usage statistics, which are very important for apps that earn revenue based on the amount of time user spends on the app.
Google is pretty confident in how the gesture navigation works, but also mentioned some concerns that users have shown over the year about how easy it is for them to mistakenly switch to another app or to the home screen, in order to deal with that, Android 14 will deliver predictive back gesture.
For those wondering, on Android 14, users will get a small preview of the home screen as they are swiping, and the app window is shrinking. On paper, it looks good, but the feature is already available if you want to try it out on Google Phone and TV. However, you will have to enable it from the Developer options.
With Android 14, the predictive back gesture will be enabled by default, making it much easier for users to make sure that they don't end up exiting the app. Google even showed an example of the Google Calendar and how it works. When the feature is working, upon swiping to go back, you see the screen shrink with a little arrow at the spot. This is an indicator that lets you double-check if the gesture you are going for is the one you want or if you are exiting the app.
These are the small inclusions that make Android a great ecosystem. However, it is worth noting that this feature is currently being discussed in vanilla Android 14. We cannot be sure if this is going to make out in other Android skins like One UI or OxygenOS.
I have been using gestures on my Galaxy S22 Ultra for as long as I have had the phone and never really had any issues where I ended up leaving the app by mistake. However, considering how Google's working on this feature, it is safe to say that there is a user base out there that experiences this. Let us know what you think of this feature.
