The side menus – or the navigation drawers or the burgers menus, no matter what you call them – are a smudge at the heart of the Q. Android gesture navigation system. Slide on either side of the screen with the Activated gestures brings the user back to a layer, a behavior obviously at odds with menus intended to be accessed by the same action. The next beta update will address this discrepancy, according to googler Chris Banes.

It was announced to droidcon Berlin that, from Q Beta 5, with activated gestures, a prolonged pressure on the edge of the screen would "take a look" at the drawers menu and that the opening of this menu would go to the opening. This stealth behavior is present on older versions of Android and even on Q when gesture navigation is turned off, but when gestures are enabled, it currently triggers the animation of the back arrow.

In the gesture navigation of Q Beta 4, you can access the navigation drawers by scanning the edge of the screen at an angle, but this action is so cumbersome that it gives the impression of 39; be a bug rather than an intentional decision of the user interface. Lately, many Android apps have avoided side menus in favor of a row of navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen, but the transition has been slow, with some applications even using both navigation paradigms (Google Photos). This change affects the entire system and does not require any modification on the part of the developers. As a result, beta users will immediately feel the benefits of this solution.

Android Q Beta 5 is expected to land at the end of the quarter, so expect improved gesture navigation in the coming days.