The OnePlus 5T is one of the many bezel-less flagship smartphones out there with an 18:9 aspect ratio, and while this increases the amount of screen real estate available for the user’s pleasure to a great extent compared to previous generation smartphones with a 16:9 aspect ratio, it’s still enough for some users who want to take advantage of the whole length and breadth of the smartphone. Luckily, this can be done on Android smartphones by disabling the default on-screen navigation buttons and using gestures to navigate the smartphone. In this article, I’m going to show you how to enable OnePlus 5T Navigation Bar Gestures on OxygenOS.
Hiding the default navigation buttons on the OnePlus 5T and replacing them with gesture-based navigation is not new. In fact, I’ve already covered how to remove the navigation bar from the OnePlus 5T and navigate the smartphone thereafter in a previous guide.
For that, however, you will need to be rooted, install Magisk and Systemless Xposed Framework and use a combination of the GravityBox Xposed module and editing of the phone’s build.prop file to get the deed done. As you must have guessed, that process involves some risks and requires a lot of steps.
If you’ve been wanting to disable the navigation bar on your OnePlus 5T and use gesture-based navigation instead, but don’t want to go through the processes described above, there’s good news. OnePlus recently released Open Beta 3 update for the OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3, and the update comes with an option to hide the navigation bar and enable navigation gestures baked right into OxygenOS. With this, you don’t need to install third-party software or perform additional tweaks to get the functionality on your smartphone.
Enabling OnePlus 5T Navigation Bar Gestures on OxygenOS – What You Need to Know
The first thing to note is that this feature is available by default in OxygenOS only on the Open Beta 3 update. This means you would have to find a way to install the beta software on your OnePlus 5T, and you stand the risk of introducing bugs into your phone system as usual. Luckily, we’ve made a guide on how to do this.
Enable OnePlus 5T OxygenOS Navigation Bar Gestures – The Process
- Open the Settings application on your OnePlus 5T.
- Scroll down till you find a “Buttons” option and tap on it to open further settings.
- Enable the “Hide the navigation bar” toggle option. If this is the first time you’re activating this setting, you’ll be taken through a short demo on how to use the gestures to navigate the smartphone.
Description of OnePlus 5T OxygenOS Navigation Gestures
- In place of the home button, you can now swipe up fully from the bottom of the screen to the top. Since the home button is customarily at the centre of the screen, you have to swipe up from the centre of the screen for this to work.
- You can use any of two different gestures to perform the functions of the back button. You can swipe up from either the left or the right bottom side of the screen, making it convenient to use whether you’re left-handed or right-handed.
- The gesture used to replace the Recent Apps button is similar to that used to replace the home button, but for this you don’t have to swipe up fully. Just swipe up a bit and your recent apps menu will be displayed.
Is this better than the previous method?
For those that don’t want to get their hands dirty with tweaking, this method is best to get the basics working. The gestures you’re given access to here are limited though, compared to what you get when you use the method I described earlier.
With the option available by default in OxygenOS with Open Beta 3, you only get to emulate the actions of the three primary on-screen navigation buttons on the smartphone which are the Home, Recent Apps and Back button.
With Swipe Navigation (the application I recommended to use in my previous guide after removing the navigation bar from the OnePlus 5T), you get to use up to twenty different gestures to navigate around your smartphone.
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