Transparent nav buttons/bar - Google Pixel 2 XL Questions & Answers

Is there any way to get a transparent (see through - not completely black) nav bar on these phones? I've searched everywhere and Googled, but the only place that looked promising was an Xposed module for way back in 4.4 KitKat. Looks like that's not even a viable option anymore. I've seen people post to use the NavBar app, but that just creates an all black bar with invisible buttons.
I'm looking to get the same effect as on the launcher homescreen - see through and usable buttons. Is there any hope for this?

I have tried in the past to change the color of the navbar via the framework-res.apk to totally transparent, as in #00000000. All I ever got was black. I think the problem is something like this:
Most apps are not designed to go all the way down to the bottom of the screen, or Android makes apps not go all the way down to the bottom of the screen, I'm not sure which. In either case, since there is nothing to draw there, making a navbar transparent just basically turns off all the pixels, hence, making it "black."
The homescreen has been designed to go all the way down to the bottom of the page, which is why it works on the home screen and not other places.
I'm no expert, this is just my experience, and what I "think" is happening. Also, I think if it were possible somebody would have done it by now, but it just doesn't seem like it's possible without a vast rewrite of either framework res or systemui code.
Edit: it occurred to me that immersive mode is a thing, so I guess apps do go to the bottom of the screen when immersive mode is enabled, but not when the navbar is enabled.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using XDA Labs

Related

[Q] [REQ] Navbar on the side in landscapemode

As mentioned in threatname i am looking for a navbarmod which sets the navbar on the right instead to the bottom when in landscape like on a phone. i don´t have got alienthumbs to get to middle of the screen to press the homebutton. would like to have it on the side if possible always on the buttom side of the tablet
i know this could be a disadvantage for gamers, but for 80% of the daily users this might be a senseful idea
L-ViZ said:
As mentioned in threatname i am looking for a navbarmod which sets the navbar on the right instead to the bottom when in landscape like on a phone. i don´t have got alienthumbs to get to middle of the screen to press the homebutton. would like to have it on the side if possible always on the buttom side of the tablet
i know this could be a disadvantage for gamers, but for 80% of the daily users this might be a senseful idea
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have rooted ur device, i recommend GoodMoodDroid's "Auto Hide Soft Keys", available thru PlayStore. It works on stock ROM. Besides hiding the nav bar, it has the nice effect of resizing it and putting it on the right hand when turning the device into landscape mode.
Regrettably i don't know another way, when u are not rooted.
of course i have my phone rooted xD but i´d like to get it out of the box without 3rd application on the side
still looking for a good solution.
hmm maybe if you use PA hybrid properties and change to stock/phone UI you'll get the nav bar at the right side.. not sure about that though
On Paranoid Android, if i set it to phone UI then the navbar is on the side. This does change some other things I didn't like about the UI but it might be what you want

[No Root] Pixel Navigation Bar (App)

NO ROOT REQUIRED
You can make your Navigation Bar look like Google Pixel!
Just install this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.axndx.prithvee.pixelnavbar
And enable "Activate Pixel Navigation Bar"
That's it!
You can also adjust SIZE of bars.
Thanks!:good:
Yash24 said:
NO ROOT REQUIRED
You can make your Navigation Bar look like Google Pixel!
Just install this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.axndx.prithvee.pixelnavbar
And enable "Activate Pixel Navigation Bar"
That's it!
You can also adjust SIZE of bars.
Thanks!:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is kind of off topic but do you know of a way to actually change the navbar to pixel navbar with the animation using root access
vibraniumdroid said:
This is kind of off topic but do you know of a way to actually change the navbar to pixel navbar with the animation using root access
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How offtopic?
And for the animation i think that the app is now also having option to set animation and if not, you can install anlther app called Android Auto which will brimg the animation.
Yash24 said:
How offtopic?
And for the animation i think that the app is now also having option to set animation and if not, you can install anlther app called Android Auto which will brimg the animation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I meant an app or method that actually change the files in the SystemUI.apk so it wont just be an overlay of the original navbar
I'm using this app for some time, but I'm not fully satisfied with it - it looks similar, but doesn't look like Pixel navbar.
First thing is the size of circle button in the middle, which on Pixels looks like the one on the screen in the first post (it's slightly bigger than the rest), but using the linked app, that button has the same size as other buttons (you can make it bigger, but then it won't be look like pixel). You can see it here on my screenshot (https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=73750943&postcount=153).
Second thing is that both side buttons draw overlay inside original buttons, but you can still see the place where layers overlaps - it's not completely fulfilled with white color as in pixels. Strange thing is, that there is an app, which uses similar overlay effect on SGS8/8+, where it looks good - middle button is bigger and side buttons are properly filled, but it doesn't work on MZP.
So, this screen is clickbait (for app), at least on Moto Z Play - effect doesn't looks like on the attached screen. Unfortunatelly...

Force apps to 18:9 (full screen)?

I enabled full immersive mode to help prevent screen burn-in and now I'm finding that a couple of apps, namely Spotify, won't utilize the full screen area and keeps a huge black bar on the top and bottom of the app. On my LG V30, there was an option to force apps to utilize the full screen and this worked perfectly with Spotify. However, I'm not seeing this option on my 2 XL.
Does anyone know how to force certain apps into full screen on the 2 XL?
Same problem here, would love a fix for this so I can use the whole screen
Accessibility has a magnification option when triple tapping the screen. It zooms in a bit too far but it does go full screen. I wonder if there is a way to lower the zoom amount somewhere.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
The LG V30 handles this really well. Little button on nav bar to switch between full screen and regular and the setting sticks per app.
This seems like and option but I haven't tried it out yet myself.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmd.immersive
SWBgHz said:
The LG V30 handles this really well. Little button on nav bar to switch between full screen and regular and the setting sticks per app.
This seems like and option but I haven't tried it out yet myself.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmd.immersive
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I pulled my V30 back off the shelf for a bit yesterday and it made me envious of how well it handles immersive mode, compared to the 2 XL. Sadly, yesterday, I started to experience the issue that others have mentioned with immersive mode enabled on the 2 XL, which is that occasionally the screen won't wake and the only way to fix it is with a hard reboot (hold power for 10 seconds). It happened to me 3 times yesterday. So now I'm realizing that in order to keep my phone fully functional and reliable, I have to disable immersive mode.
On the plus side, my squeeze for assistant feature will work again but now I'll be putting myself at risk for screen burn-in. So anything I can do to hide the nav bar whenever possible will be very welcomed. I'll give that GMD Full Screen app a try. No matter what I'm going to use Nav Bar Apps to change the color of the nav bar based on the app being used. This will allow me to prevent the black nav bar from showing up, minimizing the risk of screen burn-in.
Maybe set nav to 1 ?cuz apk need to see if there is a keyboard
Icyou said:
Maybe set nav to 1 ?cuz apk need to see if there is a keyboard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do I do that? I'm familiar with ABD/fastboot commands but not sure what the command is to change nav to 1.
Removing the navbar doesn't force apps into fullscreen
I like that my Note 8 gives you the option to force it in apps that don't support it and it remembers that decision
imtjnotu said:
I like that my Note 8 gives you the option to force it in apps that don't support it and it remembers that decision
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what V30 does, nice thing with V30 is you have a 4th button on nav bar that is a toggle between immersive on and off and however you set it 'sticks' for that app for next time. So it makes it very easy to setup/use. Frankly, this should be default behavior in Android and the fact that it isn't just wreaks of Google stubbornness we see where they just won't make and obvious and necessary changes because their original thinking is different than what people want.
Guys you will have to wait for custom roms to come out. They (at least some) will more then likely have features like this. The pixel is stock android pretty bare bones when it comes to things like that. Google isnt going to put a feature like that in (for some reason) that wouldnt be utilized by other phones. Now i know what your thinking. "But the pixel does have some "pixel specific software features" And this is true. But hey its Google it only took them 13 OS iterations to give us a proper ****ing battery % indicator.
sn0warmy said:
Yeah, I pulled my V30 back off the shelf for a bit yesterday and it made me envious of how well it handles immersive mode, compared to the 2 XL. Sadly, yesterday, I started to experience the issue that others have mentioned with immersive mode enabled on the 2 XL, which is that occasionally the screen won't wake and the only way to fix it is with a hard reboot (hold power for 10 seconds). It happened to me 3 times yesterday. So now I'm realizing that in order to keep my phone fully functional and reliable, I have to disable immersive mode.
On the plus side, my squeeze for assistant feature will work again but now I'll be putting myself at risk for screen burn-in. So anything I can do to hide the nav bar whenever possible will be very welcomed. I'll give that GMD Full Screen app a try. No matter what I'm going to use Nav Bar Apps to change the color of the nav bar based on the app being used. This will allow me to prevent the black nav bar from showing up, minimizing the risk of screen burn-in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't experienced this issue. I am using this command to enable immersive mode however in order avoid issues previously reported - battery drain, performance problems and delay waking up the screen: settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,-com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
sn0warmy said:
Yeah, I pulled my V30 back off the shelf for a bit yesterday and it made me envious of how well it handles immersive mode, compared to the 2 XL. Sadly, yesterday, I started to experience the issue that others have mentioned with immersive mode enabled on the 2 XL, which is that occasionally the screen won't wake and the only way to fix it is with a hard reboot (hold power for 10 seconds). It happened to me 3 times yesterday. So now I'm realizing that in order to keep my phone fully functional and reliable, I have to disable immersive mode.
On the plus side, my squeeze for assistant feature will work again but now I'll be putting myself at risk for screen burn-in. So anything I can do to hide the nav bar whenever possible will be very welcomed. I'll give that GMD Full Screen app a try. No matter what I'm going to use Nav Bar Apps to change the color of the nav bar based on the app being used. This will allow me to prevent the black nav bar from showing up, minimizing the risk of screen burn-in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try out the app "Navbar Apps" in the play store. What it does is creates a matching color for the navbar of whatever app you're in simply lar to how the status bar works by default in apps. Some aren't accurate but you can manually set colors for apps too. Most are pretty spot on.
This works perfect to help with burn-in. The reason being is that people have it backwards, the navbar is the only thing not burning in due to black on Oled meaning the pixels are off. So by having a black navbar on all the time you're actually seeing burn-in from the entire rest of the screen with the navbar being darker since it's not active. Using the app I recommended above will basically even out the screen so it's all being used the same amount, thus reducing any noticable burn-in. It also looks really cool and has a bunch of great features.
Icyou said:
Maybe set nav to 1 ?cuz apk need to see if there is a keyboard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too would like to know how to do this. Had it on my S8+ and loved it. Someone over there made an rro theme that removed it
Nephilim said:
Try out the app "Navbar Apps" in the play store. What it does is creates a matching color for the navbar of whatever app you're in simply lar to how the status bar works by default in apps. Some aren't accurate but you can manually set colors for apps too. Most are pretty spot on.
This works perfect to help with burn-in. The reason being is that people have it backwards, the navbar is the only thing not burning in due to black on Oled meaning the pixels are off. So by having a black navbar on all the time you're actually seeing burn-in from the entire rest of the screen with the navbar being darker since it's not active. Using the app I recommended above will basically even out the screen so it's all being used the same amount, thus reducing any noticable burn-in. It also looks really cool and has a bunch of great features.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, this option makes complete sense, actually. I couldn't understand why it would be the pixels that are turned off the most (with the black nav bar) that would cause the burn-in. So your explanation helps clear that up for me. Right before leaving for a 5 day trip in Costa Rica, I disabled full immersive mode and installed Nav Bar Apps. I spent my downtime on the plane to get all my app nav bar custom colors setup to my liking. Now all my apps have color variations ranging anywhere from red, to blue, to green, orange, yellow, white and everything in between. Everything EXCEPT black. I used the phone the entire trip for travel guidance, music, watching Netflix/Hulu, taking pictures etc.. All with absolutely no black nav bar. I just got home last night, checked the phone this morning for burn-in and there's nothing.
It's sad that this screen burns in so quickly with the black nav bar, but to me its become such a non-issue since it's so easy to avoid. The ideal setup would be to fully disable the nav bar and use pie controls instead but a ROM isn't yet available to do this. I've read that Custom Navigation bar is another solid option as it allows you to hide the nav bar by app. However, I'm not sure it allows you to change the nav bar colors and I'm fairly certain it still disables the squeeze for assistant feature because it's still technically using immersive mode in some form.
Pecata said:
I haven't experienced this issue. I am using this command to enable immersive mode however in order avoid issues previously reported - battery drain, performance problems and delay waking up the screen: settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,-com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you elaborate on this a bit?
I tried that command but it didn't do anything. So I tried the same command with a different app, example...
settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,-com.google.android.youtube
And what I noticed is that it put the full nav bar immersive mode system wide on everything EXCEPT Youtube. This was the opposite of what I anticipated would happen. Now I'm thinking the "-" means I'm telling the system to make everything immersive except the app I specified in the above command. Is this correct? If so, the only benefit I see to using this method is to pick and choose certain apps to prevent the immersive nav bar.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?
sn0warmy said:
Yeah, this option makes complete sense, actually. I couldn't understand why it would be the pixels that are turned off the most (with the black nav bar) that would cause the burn-in. So your explanation helps clear that up for me. Right before leaving for a 5 day trip in Costa Rica, I disabled full immersive mode and installed Nav Bar Apps. I spent my downtime on the plane to get all my app nav bar custom colors setup to my liking. Now all my apps have color variations ranging anywhere from red, to blue, to green, orange, yellow, white and everything in between. Everything EXCEPT black. I used the phone the entire trip for travel guidance, music, watching Netflix/Hulu, taking pictures etc.. All with absolutely no black nav bar. I just got home last night, checked the phone this morning for burn-in and there's nothing.
It's sad that this screen burns in so quickly with the black nav bar, but to me its become such a non-issue since it's so easy to avoid. The ideal setup would be to fully disable the nav bar and use pie controls instead but a ROM isn't yet available to do this. I've read that Custom Navigation bar is another solid option as it allows you to hide the nav bar by app. However, I'm not sure it allows you to change the nav bar colors and I'm fairly certain it still disables the squeeze for assistant feature because it's still technically using immersive mode in some form.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you like it. I'm enjoying it a lot. It makes you feel like you're actually using the whole screen instead of having the ugly cut off black bottom with nav buttons.
Nephilim said:
Glad you like it. I'm enjoying it a lot. It makes you feel like you're actually using the whole screen instead of having the ugly cut off black bottom with nav buttons.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the heads up on this. Back in the day an Xposed module was needed for this and there was a spreadsheet going on matching apps colors that were detected wrong. The last good PA ROM had it baked in as well. Though I wonder how much longer this will be on the Play Store with Google set on removing anything that touches Accessibility Services that aren't related to a disability.
sn0warmy said:
Can you elaborate on this a bit?
I tried that command but it didn't do anything. So I tried the same command with a different app, example...
settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,-com.google.android.youtube
And what I noticed is that it put the full nav bar immersive mode system wide on everything EXCEPT Youtube. This was the opposite of what I anticipated would happen. Now I'm thinking the "-" means I'm telling the system to make everything immersive except the app I specified in the above command. Is this correct? If so, the only benefit I see to using this method is to pick and choose certain apps to prevent the immersive nav bar.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I spent some more time fiddling with this and tried testing the same command but without the "-". So the new command is:
settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,com.google.android.youtube
What I noticed is that the nav bar immersive setting still seems to be system wide. However, squeeze for assistant is still working with the screen off. This has not been the case with any other immersive commands I've tried. So this definitely handles it a little differently. I'll test this for a while to see if I have any issues with screen not waking from sleep.
AndrasLOHF said:
Thanks for the heads up on this. Back in the day an Xposed module was needed for this and there was a spreadsheet going on matching apps colors that were detected wrong. The last good PA ROM had it baked in as well. Though I wonder how much longer this will be on the Play Store with Google set on removing anything that touches Accessibility Services that aren't related to a disability.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't care less if things get removed from play store, we can still sideload and I'm sure someone as useful as Navbar Apps would just move to XDA Labs if it got removed.

Anyway to make navigation bar transparent for all apps?

I'm looking for a way to make the navigation bar transparent so when in an app like Chrome or YouTube you can see what's on the tab itself rather than the black bar with the navigation keys. I tried using apps that hide the navigation bar but I felt that it added an unnecessary stuff. So what I'm looking for is a way to make the bar transparent but still have the navigation buttons (home, multi function and back buttons) still be accessible. Anyone in know how this can be done? Also, not looking for ways that require root.
godfather17 said:
I'm looking for a way to make the navigation bar transparent so when in an app like Chrome or YouTube you can see what's on the tab itself rather than the black bar with the navigation keys. I tried using apps that hide the navigation bar but I felt that it added an unnecessary stuff. So what I'm looking for is a way to make the bar transparent but still have the navigation buttons (home, multi function and back buttons) still be accessible. Anyone in know how this can be done? Also, not looking for ways that require root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to know this as well. I know you can use Nav Bar Apps (Play Store link) to change the color of the Nav bar based on the app you are using. However, I haven't been able to use it to make the nav bar transparent.
For now, I've enabled full immersive mode and use Pie Control (Play Store link). So I almost never see the nav bar on the bottom of the screen. The only time the bottom nav bar shows up is with the Google Keyboard and I haven't figured out a way to disable that yet.
sn0warmy said:
I'd like to know this as well. I know you can use Nav Bar Apps (Play Store link) to change the color of the Nav bar based on the app you are using. However, I haven't been able to use it to make the nav bar transparent.
For now, I've enabled full immersive mode and use Pie Control (Play Store link). So I almost never see the nav bar on the bottom of the screen. The only time the bottom nav bar shows up is with the Google Keyboard and I haven't figured out a way to disable that yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I basically spent the whole day looking for an answer but the closest I came was a video on how to do it on a LG g3. It requires root though. Can't believe that with all the thin bezels this year, a way hasn't been found. It defeats the purpose to having thin bezels when the navigation bar makes it look like the bezels are huge. Smh
I'd like the same!! I've enabled immersive mode, but when it's enabled, it causes weird locking/unlocking screen issues.
wefwefr said:
I'd like the same!! I've enabled immersive mode, but when it's enabled, it causes weird locking/unlocking screen issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check the thread where you got the adb command. There is an shell command you can execute and it's fixed the freezes for me.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
Layout Whitelist Editor
This works for me. On my Pixel 2 XL. I'm rooted on Android 10.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.tsdo.elw
gwizerd said:
This works for me. On my Pixel 2 XL. I'm rooted on Android 10.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.tsdo.elw
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use this app and it works great. But, you might want to check the date of the post you're replying to next time. Last response before yours was from two years ago.

Full Screen Gestures Updated???

So just yesterday I noticed there was change with my fullscreen gestures. Before, selecting the android 10 full screen gestures would display a tiny bar at the bottom of the screen. Now this bar is not present. There was a function where you could slide across this bottom bar to quick switch between recent apps, but this function is also gone. This is a big bummer for me because I frequently used that feature and was very happy to have it on this phone.
This came around the same time that I was playing around with different launchers. I did replace the 'TouchWizHome_2017.apk' with a newer version when I was playing around, but I have since replaced the stock apk that I backed up and I am still encountering the same issue. I did not notice this problem before doing that, but I do not know for sure it was not present.
Did anyone else notice this change? Or did I just screw myself by messing around....
I ran the command 'cm overlay enable com.android.internal.systemui.navbar.gestural' and the thin bar on the bottom came back, but the little grey bar inside it that was remenicent of the iphone was not there and the quick switch functionality was still absent. I suspect that installing the newer oneui launcher actually patched the systemui apk, since it is a priv_app. I can not understand why companies insist on taking away great functions like this.....
I got SystemUI and TouchWizHome_2017 files from the TA1 rom for my n9750 hosted on sammobile. Replacing those files in priv-app had no impact on my problem. Makes me further suspect it might have been some background update that broke this .

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