How to Hide Navigation Bar in Samsung One UI

For years, we’ve had standard navigation buttons like Home, Back, and Multitasking for navigating Android. Google switched to pill-based gesture navigation with Android 9 and replaced it again with full-screen gestures in Android 10. Phone manufacturers are also following Google’s lead to apply the changes to their devices. For example, Samsung has implemented full-screen gestures in One UI. But all Galaxy devices come with a legacy navigation bar with Home, Back and Multitasking buttons at the bottom.

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

The behavior makes sense for Samsung. The company sells more than 300 million smartphones each year. A big change in operating system navigation may not be easy for every user. That’s exactly why the company gives you so many options to customize the navigation bar in One UI.

In this post, we’ll talk about how to hide the standard navigation bar in Samsung One UI and use other gesture-based navigation to spice up the experience. Lets start.

Default Navigation Setting in Samsung One UI

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

You may want to check Samsung’s handling of Android 10 gestures in Settings. It offers a better experience and gives the user more screen space.

Hide Navigation Bar and Take Actions

In keeping with Samsung’s style, the Navigation gesture menu is full of customization. Follow the steps below to make the changes.

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

Step 2: Scroll down to the on-screen menu and tap on it.

Stage 3: Go to the navigation bar menu.

Step 4: Here you will see the default button row for the Navigation bar.

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

Step 6: Tap full screen gestures.

This 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 as an indicator. Let me explain how full screen gestures work in One UI.

• Swipe from bottom to top to go home
• Swipe from either side to go back
• Swipe up from the middle and hold to open the multitasking menu
• Swipe up from both bottom corners to trigger Google Assistant

Samsung also lets you change the Back gesture sensitivity. Open the Settings app and go to Display > Navigation Bar > Fullscreen Gestures > More options and change the Back gesture sensitivity.

Users can also hide motion hints from the Navigation Bar menu.

The biggest problem with Android 10 gestures is that the Back gesture doesn’t play well with the hamburger menu of many Android apps. Google encourages developers to implement the bottom menu bar for app navigation. However, thousands of Android apps still use the hamburger menu, which is confusing for users to navigate.

Sometimes when you try to open the hamburger menu, it perceives it as a backhand and logs the user out of the app. Samsung also has a solution to this problem.

Use Bottom Navigation Gestures

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

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

Step 2: Go to Display > Navigation Bar > Full screen gestures > More options > Swipe from bottom.

The option hides the navigation bar and shows you the bottom navigation bar indicator. Swipe up from the middle to go home, swipe up from the left to go back, and swipe up from the right to open the multitasking menu. You can also swipe up and hold to open the Google Assistant app.

One Hand Mode Gesture

Samsung offers a neat One-handed mode in One UI. The mod is useful on large smartphones as it shrinks the screen and lets you use it with one hand.

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

When you switch to full-screen gestures, you can swipe down from the center of the bottom edge of the screen to activate One-handed mode.

Use Navigation Gestures in Samsung One UI

Reviewers often criticize Samsung for offering too many customization options in One UI. But at the end of the day, it’s consumers who have more options to make changes to the overall experience. If you have recently purchased a new Samsung phone, try the navigation gestures and see if it works for your use.

Next: Want to learn more about Samsung One UI? Read the post below to find the 11 best Samsung One UI tips and tricks.