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Prepare your app to support predictive back gestures

Posted by Jason Tang, Product Management, Diego Zuluaga, Developer Relations, and Michael Mauzy, Developer Documentation

Since we introduced gesture navigation in Android 10, users have signaled they want to understand where a back gesture will take them before they complete it.

As the first step to addressing this need, we've been developing a predictive back gesture. When a user starts their gesture by swiping back, we’ll show an animated preview of the destination UI, and the user can complete the gesture to navigate to that UI if they want – as shown in the following example.

Although the predictive back gesture won’t be visible to users in Android 13, we’re making an early version of the UI available as a developer option for testing starting in Beta 4. We plan to make the UI available to users in a future Android release, and we’d like all apps to be ready. We’re also working with partners to ensure it’s consistent across devices.

Read on for details on how to try out the new gesture and support it in your apps. Adding support for predictive back gesture is straightforward for most apps, and you can get started today.

We also encourage you to submit your feedback.

Try out the predictive back gesture in Beta 4

To try out the early version of the predictive back gesture available through the developer option, you’ll need to first update your app to support the predictive back gesture, and then enable the developer option.

Update your app to support predictive back gesture

To help make predictive back gesture helpful and consistent for users, we're moving to an ahead-of-time model for back event handling by adding new APIs and deprecating existing APIs.

The new platform APIs and updates to AndroidX Activity 1.6+ are designed to make your transition from unsupported APIs (KeyEvent#KEYCODE_BACK and OnBackPressed) to the predictive back gesture as smooth as possible.

The new platform APIs include OnBackInvokedCallback and OnBackInvokedDispatcher, which AndroidX Activity 1.6+ supports through the existing OnBackPressedCallback and OnBackPressedDispatcher APIs.

You can start testing this feature in two to four steps, depending on your existing implementation.

To begin testing this feature:


1. Upgrade to AndroidX Activity 1.6.0-alpha05. By upgrading your dependency on AndroidX Activity, APIs that are already using the OnBackPressedDispatcher APIs such as Fragments and the Navigation Component will seamlessly work when you opt-in for the predictive back gesture. 

// In your build.gradle file:
dependencies {

  // Add this in addition to your other dependencies
  implementation "androidx.activity:activity:1.6.0-alpha05"


2. Opt-in for the predictive back gesture. Opt-in your app by setting the EnableOnBackInvokedCallback flag to true at the application level in the AndroidManifest.xml.

<application

    ...

    android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback="true"

    ... >

...

</application>


If your app doesn’t intercept the back event, you're done at this step.

Note: Opt-in is optional in Android 13, and it will be ignored after this version.

3. Create a callback to intercept the system Back button/event. If possible, we recommend using the AndroidX APIs as shown below. For non-AndroidX use cases, check the platform API mentioned above.

This snippet implements handleOnBackPressed and adds the OnBackPressedCallback to the OnBackPressedDispatcher at the activity level.

 val onBackPressedCallback = object: OnBackPressedCallback(true) {

   override fun handleOnBackPressed() {

     // Your business logic to handle the back pressed event

   }

 }

 requireActivity().onBackPressedDispatcher

   .addCallback(onBackPressedCallback)

4. When your app is ready to stop intercepting the system Back event, disable the onBackPressedCallback callback.
 

onBackPressedCallback.isEnabled = webView.canGoBack()


Note: Your app may require using the platform APIs (OnBackInvokedCallback and OnBackPressedDispatcher) to implement the predictive back gesture. Read our documentation for details.

Enable the developer option to test the predictive back gesture

Once you’ve updated your app to support the predictive back gesture, you can enable a developer option (supported in Android 13 Beta 4 and higher) to see it for yourself.

To test this animation, complete the following steps:
  1. On your device, go to Settings > System > Developer options.
  2. Select Predictive back animations.
  3. Launch your updated app, and use the back gesture to see it in action.

Learn more

In addition to our detailed documentation, try out our predictive back gesture codelab in an actual implementation.

If you need a refresher on system back and predictive back gesture on Android, we recommend watching Basics for System Back.


Thank you again for all the feedback and being a part of the Android Community - we love collaborating together to provide the best experience for our users.

Developer-Powered CTS (CTS-D)

Posted by Sachiyo Sugimoto, Android Partner Engineering

A strength of Android is its diverse ecosystem of devices, brought to market by more than 24K distinct devices, and used by billions of people around the world. Since the early releases of Android, we’ve invested in our Android Compatibility Program as a way to ensure that devices continue to provide a stable, consistent environment for apps.

The Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) is a key part of the program - it is a collection of more than two million test cases that check Android device implementations to ensure developer applications run on a variety of devices and enable a consistent application experience for users.

Device makers run CTS on their devices throughout the development process, and use it to identify and fix bugs early. Over the years we have constantly expanded the suite by adding new test cases, and today CTS includes more than 2 million tests. It is still growing - as Android evolves, there are new areas to cover and there are also gaps where we are constantly working to create additional tests.

While most CTS tests are written by Android engineers, we know that app developers have a unique perspective on actual device compatibility issues. So to enhance CTS with better input from app developers, we are adding a new test suite called CTS-D that is built and run by developers like you.



What is CTS-D?

CTS-D is a new CTS module that is powered by app developers with a focus on pain points that they are seeing in the field. Developers can build and contribute test cases to CTS-D to help catch those issues, and they can run the CTS-D suite to verify compatibility. Longer term, our plan is to work closely with the Android developer community to expand the CTS-D suite.

We know that many of you have already created your own tests to verify compatibility on various devices. We want to work with you to bring those tests into AOSP, and you can see the first tests contributed by the community in the initial CTS-D commit here.

So with CTS-D, we are helping to make those kinds of tests available widely, to help device manufacturers and app developers identify and share issues more effectively.

How is CTS-D used?

CTS-D is open-sourced and available on AOSP, so any app developer can use it as a verification tool. Using CTS-D helps to minimize the communication overhead among app developers, device manufacturers and Google, helping to resolve issues effectively.

If a certain device does not pass a CTS-D test, please report the problem using this issue tracker template. After we verify the issue on the reported device, we will work with our partners to resolve it. We're also strongly advising device manufacturers to use CTS-D to discover and mitigate issues.

Get Started with CTS-D!

If you have an idea for CTS-D, please file a test proposal using this issue tracker template before contributing your test code to AOSP. The Android team will review your proposal and verify your test’s eligibility. We’re currently most interested in adding more test cases in the area of Power Management.

Just like with CTS, new CTS-D test cases must meet eligibility requirements and can only enforce the following:
  1. All public API behaviors that are described in Android developer documentation.
  2. All MUST requirements that are included in Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD).
  3. Test cases that have not been covered by existing CTS test cases in AOSP
If you are interested in learning more about CTS-D, check out tutorials here on how to contribute to and utilize CTS-D. Note that the review process for new CTS-D test cases can take some time, so thanks for your patience. We hope you will give CTS-D a try soon. Let’s collaboratively make the Android experience even better!

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