UI and gestures in SFOS - Off topic

I think there was a patch many years ago for early sfos versions.
Similar to this one:

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This problem might be fixed with the notch of the new Jolla phone. They could just implement it such that swiping down right if the notch closes the app while swiping down left if the notch brings down the menu

J2 will be my first SailfishOS phone. So I don’t currently have an opinion on the gestures being intuitive or not. For me reachability is the first thing that comes to mind while reading these suggestions. When I hear (well read) you describing gestures starting from the notch, top left, top right, this and that, I can already feel myself hate using these gestures for the most basic of commands. I’m not advocating for a small phone here even though I would like to, I’ve seen the other thread. But it has to be possible to use a phone comfortably with one hand. Otherwise daily use cannot be enjoyable imho.

There still is a very simple way to quickly switch between the actual app and the last used one. The trick in the link above is still working:
As defaultuser:

dconf write /desktop/sailfish/experimental/quickAppToggleGesture true

Now, you can left-swipe from right out of the screen, to 2/3 screen in, it vibrates and you are in the other app.

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The only gesture you have to reach for in sfos is to close the app completely.
I rarely use it for example because when I want to close apps a long press on the main screen gives me the option to either close some or all of them.
The example above, pulley menus, and back from anywhere are huge examples on how sfos can be used with one hand easily, even ā€œbefore it was coolā€ to offer reachability features in other OSes.

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I still never use the top menu or app drawer while in app. There just is no point, minimizing is suuuper quick and in the multitasking view those are much more ergonomic whole-surface swipes. As far as i’m concerned those two edge gestures are just concessions to people that got too used to how stuff works elsewhere.

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Thanks for the clarification. That sounds promising. My small hands are going to appreciate that.

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Other than taking a screenshot, I can’t remember any scenario where I had to pull down the toggles within an app as well.
And if that option is mapped elsewhere, I don’t think I will ever have to.

Just press both volume buttons?

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It doesn’t work on my 10 III or G2 and for the life of me I can’t understand why. But anyway, a problem for another topic.

Works perfectly fine on mine. See you in another topic.

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SFOS swipes can be used with either hand, so you have to choose between making left-handed people really really sad, or have a setting where the edge swipe edges are swapped making forward moving swipe a backward action, which is not confusing at all.

If I remember correctly, Jolla communicated on the old TJO-forum that they conducted extensive A/B-testing when making major changes to gestures between the major version in the past.

Why don’t you promote removing the top menu from the top swipe gesture when an app is open instead? The original top swipe was intended to close an open app and only open the top menu if you were in the home/lock/events view. Splitting the top swipe into three areas is a fairly new feature.

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That’s the normal whole-surface action already. Much better and easier than edge swipes, as it should be.
Or are you planning on using mainly/only Android apps? I don’t think adapting how the whole OS works for that is reasonable.

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This is not back, but more like minimise/multitasking gesture.

? You mean from the top…? Swipe from left or right edge on the screen is what I mentioned up here

I mean… Technically there is - back gesture. I’m not talking about swiping when you see the light in the corner, because this is fine - UI is telling you what you can do, same as when you are in app and you swipe down in the center of the screen an get ,context menuā€ (pulleys, that’s what you mean?)
But it doesn’t work everywhere - in browser in particular. Also it’s not gonna work in android apps AFAIK. The ,backā€ gesture working like a button in similar way to android could work in any app - with indicator or not.

It sucks, tried it moment ago. It expects me to measure the 2/3 of the screen… Hard to do it while walking and phone is shaking.
Also it’s not exactly giving me a visual information to which app I’m going back. It highlights the app, but compared to android an iOS where you swipe sideways on the bar at the bottom and the you see exactly the app you are going back kinda like switching between workspaces on Gnome now, or on MacOS - it’s just not as intuitive. With this you can hold it half swipe and read a code from message when copying doesn’t work or something like that.
Also in my case I don’t have any vibration (bug?).

Minimise gesture could be done from bottom, there is no need to swipe for half of the screen from the sides. Also gestures that are on top or bottom are ambidextrous by design as long, as he work on the whole top/bottom.

No, I don’t plan on using android app actually - I would love to have everything native or at least Linux based, but that’s not realistic now… :frowning:

That’s the only places unless someone screwed up their app - and odds of those apps having a well-behaved ā€œbackā€ despite that are pretty slim.

Commas are not quotation marks! :face_vomiting:

What does this mean? You think the swipe is too long? Surely a swipe from below would have some distance setting too. As would a back-swipe. And i’m pretty sure it has some inertia thing.

As is swiping from the side, if it is on either side. Moot point.

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Do you have an access to android phone currently? I have Pixel 6A with GrapheneOS/Android 16, and I don’t know what you mean, because currently besides mimicking Apple’s ,glassā€ ui with Material something 3 Android looks pretty good.

I am still on my iPhone. I can only say that this ā€œliquid glassā€ looks in some animations rather like transparent jelly, bouncing around. I think it looks fairly silly. Sure, some elaborated things like the way the fake light bending at the edges look cool the first time round but it is all just for its own sake. Uncanny valley stuff.

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Different habits, I guess.
I was not annoyed by the 2/3. I just approximate.
Note that the vibration is perhaps more of an help than I thought. I it is missing, the feature is perhaps harder to use.

Actually, it is pretty simple: You go back to the last used app. (The visual information is the app itself, finally).

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Sounds a lot like ā€œwhole screen with 1/3 error marginā€ to me. No need to hit the 2/3 mark exactly - just go past it.

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