There has been a lot of debate about the size of a phone vs. the ability to use it with one hand. The Top menu and app closing gesture are two of the things mentioned to be out of reach on big phones. I have a suggestion to make it easier to close the current app.
The idea is to use the bottom left and right margins for the gesture, by splitting the swipe area the same way as the top swipe is already split.
Advantages: The swipe up to close gesture…
is easier to reach without shifting your grip
is faster than first going to the overview, then long-pressing the app cover
mirrors the existing gesture, keeping the UI consistent
is similar to other platforms, easing the transition to SailfishOS
Disadvantages: The swipe up to close gesture…
shares the lack of discoverability with the existing gesture
could accidentally close the app instead of opening the app drawer
could accidentally close the app instead of opening the app drawer
This couldn’t happen because when you close an app by swiping, it first shows the start screen with an X symbol on the currently used app. This allows you to revert by swiping back, so accidental closure is not possible.
Hah! You’re right, of course. I guess it might still happen, if people open the app grid with a quick swipe, leaving very little time to reverse the gesture. But it looks like a marginal problem indeed.
That sounds faster than the swipe + long press + tap X method, still not as convenient as the single-swipe gesture.
I don’t quite follow you on the last “another swipe on homescreen” part, though. Does the patch allow swiping covers off the screen to close apps (Apple style)? Because for me, swiping anywhere on the homescreen opens the app grid or the top menu.
I sometimes accidently close apps with this swipe down from top-left or top-right, so I dont like or use that gesture at all. I either use the longpress on homescreen and click method (for me thats fast enough) or close all.
Ah, I good to know! Just read the description on Openrepos, and I think I understand.
Does the patch retain the ability to open app grid and top menu by swiping up/down on homescreen (outside of covers)? Edit: Wouldn’t want to lose the only convenient access to the top menu on tall devices.
To be fair, probably only a handful of people use those, because they’re completely hidden and don’t really integrate well with the rest of the OS, and were never very functional anyway because their only purpose was to show ads on the Intex phone.
I can imagine some neat use cases, in particular for phones without AAS - you could put the Android homescreen in a partner space and have parallel to the usual home screen instead of a hirarchy below
I tried in times of SFOS 4.x to make the patch work with partner spaces, but result was mix - carousel with swipe the cover away which was confusing with swipe to side to partner space because it was same direction of swipe (precision was needed - swipe to partner space mainly in the little space between covers or at bottom under covers). And I didn’t find how to keep no carousel and have partner spaces on left side after eventsview.