Our mobile phones have become true pocket PCs, and with them we can do almost anything. How we do it comfortably depends a lot on the facilities that the telephone gives us to be able to move through its menus. And in the case of your Xiaomi mobile you can access many navigation gestures.
The latest versions of the Android operating system have greatly facilitated navigation in the operating system of our phone, but then the different manufacturers have contributed their bit to facilitate the work on their phones, thanks to the layers of software. In the case of MIUI we have many gestures to be able to quickly navigate the phone.
Why use navigation gestures?
This is the first question that we must ask ourselves, if we have correctly configured and activated the navigation gestures on our mobile, otherwise it will be impossible for us to enjoy this simple way of moving around the phone.
Navigation gestures came to Android phones after screens grew to the front end, leaving virtually no room for the physical buttons that were often found on phones from many manufacturers. These navigation gestures therefore came to replace the traditional Android navigation method, which consisted of three buttons:
- Home : to access the home screen of the phone with a touch, so that we could quickly exit an app.
- Back : as its name suggests, this button allowed you to move to the previous screen, in such a way that it was possible to quickly return to a previous web page or to the previous menu visited.
- Multitasking : this button allowed direct access to all open apps, to switch to another active one, or to close one or all of those that are currently active on our phone.
Well, the navigation gestures offer the same functions, all of them, but with the only need to slide your fingers on the screen, without touching buttons , which by the way, no longer exist on Xiaomi phones, at least the physical. And it is that by default our Android mobile comes from the factory with the traditional navigation buttons. And what we must do therefore is activate the touch gestures on the phone, to be able to move quickly through its menus.
Do you have gestures activated on your Xiaomi?
That is the first question you should ask yourself, if you have the traditional Android buttons, even if they are tactile at the bottom of the screen, it is that obviously you do not have these gestures activated . Well you can do it in a simple way as you will be able to see now:
- Access the settings of your Xiaomi mobile
- Click on “Additional settings”
- Select “Play full screen”
Once inside this screen we have two options, choose the navigation “buttons” or ” Full screen gestures “, the first is the traditional Android method, and instead the second is the one that allows us to access the tactile navigation gestures . When we choose these gestures, the traditional Android buttons will disappear completely.
And that is where you will have to learn to use the phone screen without the need for buttons , only with gestures. In this way, everything you could do with the virtual buttons of Android, you can do it directly with the edges of the phone screen, from them your Xiaomi will identify everything you want to do to move around the terminal.
These are the navigation gestures
The navigation gestures of the phone are easy to learn, in fact MIUI itself teaches us and offers us some practice exercises to learn how we can move through the different menus. And is that once we select the new full-screen navigation mode, which must be recognized that it has a somewhat descriptive name, we will be able to see all the available gestures at the bottom.
These will be to go to the home screen, open the recent ones, go back, activate the action of the application or switch to the previous application. So with this gesture navigation we will be able to access even more functions than we had at our fingertips when we used the traditional Android buttons.
Gesture “go to home screen”
This gesture is one of the ones that we are going to use the most on our Xiaomi phone. And it is that with it we will be able to exit from any app to the home screen to in turn go to any other area of the phone. This gesture is performed as follows:
- Swipe from the bottom of the screen into the screen until the current app screen fades to the center of the screen.
This movement therefore replaces the old “Home” button that was located in the center of the three virtual ones that Android phones traditionally had, whether they were virtual or physical.
Recent or multitasking gesture
This gesture is very similar to the previous one, in fact it was traditionally also done with the phone’s Home navigation button. For that reason this gesture is so similar to the previous one in its performance, with a small difference:
- Swipe from the bottom of the screen to the inside of the screen and stop your finger when it is more or less in the center of the screen. There you will have to hold your finger for a moment until all the open apps and processes appear.
At this point you will be able to move through the different apps by sliding the screen, as you did traditionally on your previous mobiles with navigation with traditional buttons.
Gesture of returning
This is another one that we will use more, and that as you can imagine replaces the back or back button of traditional mobiles. This gesture is used to move to the previous screen in any app, be it the web browser, an app, a game or any other, the way to do it is very simple:
- Swipe from the left edge of the screen to the center of the screen.
It will not be necessary to reach the center of the screen for the return order to be carried out, with a slight movement your Xiaomi mobile will already know that you want to return in the app that you currently have open. Within this same gesture we have another very similar one, which is to ” activate the action of the application ” that allows us to open a contextual menu of the app. To do this, you just have to do the following:
- Swipe from the top left of the screen to the right
In this way, when we do this gesture, a contextual menu will appear on the side of the app, one of those where we can access the settings or other sections of these applications.
Gesture to switch to previous application
This gesture on Xiaomi mobiles that had capacitive navigation buttons could be done by sliding your finger through all three from right to left and vice versa. In this case, it is a gesture that allows us to move between the different apps open on the phone, changing from one to another in order of use. The way to do it is similar to multitasking, although with some specific difference:
- Swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to the center of the screen and hold.
In this way, the different apps that we have open will appear, jumping from one to another.
Deploy the new MIUI control center
This is one of the latest MIUI functions, which has added a new control center from which we can control almost everything on our mobile just by displaying a small menu at the top of the screen. The operation is very simple.
- Unfold the notifications panel : swipe from the upper left half of the screen to the center of the screen.
- Unfold the MIUI 12.5 control panel : this new control panel can be displayed in exactly the opposite way, swipe from the upper end of the right half of the screen and towards the center of it. You will see a different shortcut menu, with the control of your Xiaomi mobile from the MIUI perspective.
