It’s been a while since Google try to improve the back gesture of Android to allow users to have a preview of where they will end up after doing it, and now, after watching it on Calendar And YouTube Musicalso comes up Gmail (discover some tricks to better organize emails on Gmail).
We are talking about Predictive animations for the Back gesture (Prediptive Back, in English), a function that made its appearance in Android 13 and on Android 14 is appearing on some apps.
What are predictive animations for the back gesture
This tool solves a problem when doing the gesture backthat is, you don’t know if you’re going back to Home on your phone or on a previous page within the app.
In practice, if the animation predictive is enabled, you will see a preview of the target screen, with the current screen which narrows slightly with dei round edges to show it background below. At that point, if you left the app by mistake, you can go back.
Google said this feature is liked it a lot to users and has been trying for some time to convince developers third parties to implement it. And if on Android 14 it is possible to enable it at system level from the developer options (even if the individual apps must have the method enabled enableOnBackInvokedCallback in the manifest file), is now introducing it at the app level without having to do anything.
how to see predictive animations for the back gesture in Gmail
Now it’s the case with Gmail. The novelty seems to have appeared in the latest version of the app 2024.03.03.x. If you open a message and then swipe back on the left or right edge, you will see the email screen shrink in the window with rounded corners and behind the app home screen (image below).
As we anticipated, the animation is also present on Google Calendarwhen closing a full-screen event in Schedule or Day view, and on YouTube Music. To see it, however, your phone must be updated to Android 14.
