PC World - USA (2019-10)

94 PCWorld OCTOBER 2019

HERE’S HOW ANDROID 10’S BEST NEW FEATURES

Open app drawer:

Swipe up from bottom

of the screen when on

home screen, or swipe

up a second time when

in the app switcher.

Summon

Assistant: Swipe from

either the right or left

corner of the screen.

Because the Back

button is gone, you’re

probably wondering

how you go back one

screen when using an

app. It’s simple: You swipe from either side

of the screen. That means swiping left from

the right side of the screen or swiping right

from the left side of the screen will go back a

screen. You’ll see an arrow animation and

feel a small vibration, and then you only

need to lift your finger to go back a screen.

You’ll also notice there’s a new gear icon

to the right of the description of how the

new gesture works. Here you’ll find settings

to adjust Back Sensitivity, giving you several

levels for how hard you need to swipe to

trigger the Back feature. You’ll want a fine

degree of control, because some apps allow

for slide-out menus and other side-screen

actions. In fact, Google has allowed for

blocking out roughly 25 percent of the

bottom half of the left side of the screen

(technically called a “vertical app exclusion

limit”), so developers can still include slide-

out menus without disrupting the Back

gesture. If an app has a slide-out menu,

swiping from the bottom of the left side of

the screen will pull out the menu, while

swiping from anywhere else will go back. If

an app doesn’t have a slide-out menu or

side-screen action, you can swipe anywhere

to go back.

ANDROID 10

NOTIFICATIONS

It wouldn’t be a new Android release without

some tweaks to the notification system. The

changes in Android 10 aren’t as dramatic as

they were in Pie, but they’re still meaningful.

You can still either long-press or short-

swipe on a notification in the shade to bring

up the alert settings, but there’s more to

Notifications have received some smart changes in Android 10.