The Apple’s flagship smartphone ‘iPhone X’ caught quite a number of eyeballs when it was launched, for its stunning design, incredible camera, and huge screen. However, the best part of the iPhone X which excited the Apple fans more is not its display, not its camera, not its hardware or spec sheet at all: it’s the introduction of a gesture-based interface.
Apple killed the Home button and instead, added swipe gestures that can now perform the actions reserved for the Home button in prior iPhone models. Android fans might argue that the back button on Google’s platform is very easy to reach, unlike in iOS. But, iPhone X’s gestures really make up for a great user experience. For instance, swiping down from the top of the screen lets you see the notifications while a half-swipe from the middle of the screen will activate the search function, and swiping halfway up from the bottom of the screen will let you display the app switcher.
However, not using the iPhone X doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t take advantage of some of its cool features. Android users can already get the much talked about iPhone X notch on their Android devices. Now, they can also try iPhone X gestures on Android smartphone with ease. Here are a couple of Android gesture apps that can allow them to do so.
How to get iPhone X Gestures On Android Smartphone?
If you want the iPhone X’s gestures on your Android device, here are two apps that you can try:
GESTURE CONTROL – NEXT LEVEL NAVIGATION
Gesture Control is a lightweight Android app that runs on Android 4.1 (and above) and lets you get a complete iPhone X-like experience on Android phones. It provides a variety of iPhone X-like gestures which can be used to go the Home screen, go back, open notifications shade, open recent apps, access split screen, open quick settings, etc. What makes this app even cooler is that it even lets you do half-swipe gestures and swipe up and hold, similar to the iPhone X.
There are some more gestures like double tap, long tap, and double tap & hold, supported by Gesture Control app, but they can be enabled after upgrading to the Pro/donation version.
When you first run the app, it will prompt you to authorize it as an accessibility service. That access is needed in order for the app to be able to activate system functions like Home, Back, and Overview — which, of course, is core to its very purpose.
The app lets you have a small black bar at the bottom of the screen so that you know where to start your gestures from. The good thing is that once you are comfortable with the area, you can disable it altogether.
No app is without its share of drawbacks and although Gesture Control is a near-perfect app, it does come with limitations. Android users having a virtual navigation bar might face some inconvenience as the app doesn’t hide it.
ALL IN ONE GESTURES
All In One Gesture provide some iPhone X gestures on an Android smartphone running Android 4.4 and above. In terms of features, it offers way more than Gesture Control. But, at the same time, it would take a while to get used to it.
Unlike Gesture control, this app doesn’t confine the user’s finger to the bottom edge of the screen. The app offers many swipe gestures which work along the various edges of the display as well as corners.
There the three categories of gestures offered by the app. You can customize the physical keys of the device to launch different apps or shortcuts and navigate to different screens through different swipe gestures. However, some of the gestures require root access on the Android device.
After you have installed the All in one gestures app from the Google Play Store, open it and you will see the home page of the app with three tabs: Hard Keys, Swipe, Status bar. Under the Status Bar tab, you can find the option to add gestures to the status bar (notification bar) and navigation bar.
One thing that many users would find useful is that they can enable or disable specific gesture categories instead of disabling all of them at once.
A Pro version of the app is available, but it only removes advertisements, as the app doesn’t cut down features.