Gesture navigation has been with us on Android for a few years now, but it’s clear that not everyone has made the switch yet.Android 14 Beta 3wants to make this easier with a redesigned gesture navigation tutorial that you may even access via system settings at any time — just in case you need a refresher on how gesture navigation works.
The new tutorial is accessible in system settings underSystem → Navigation modevia a pretty unintuitively labeled button in the navigation mode preview window, depicting a finger tapping a round button. When you tap it, you’re taken to a panel consisting of three big sections:Go home, go back,andswitch apps. At a glance, it’s clear that Google still has some work to do in this menu, as the last option is barely legible with white text on a bright surface.
Tapping any of the individual tutorials takes you to a section that shows you how certain gestures are executed, with animations showing fingers on your screen that perform the required action. When you don’t follow the instructions straight away, some Material Design 3-inspired shapes and arrows point you to the part of the screen you need to interact with. Once the demo is over, you can tap a Done button to return to the tutorial overview.
The new tutorials are far from a groundbreaking addition, and they might seem superfluous on regular Pixel phones. With Google entering the tablet and foldable markets, it’s likely that these tutorials were redesigned with those in mind. ThePixel Foldand thePixel Tabletboth offer a taskbar that adds another dimension to gesture navigation, and it’s likely that Google simply redid the tutorial for regular gesture navigation while it was working on new instructions on how to use the taskbar. We suspect that Google devices shipping with Android 14 out of the box will include this tutorial in the setup process, too.
