Routines + could be downloaded from Galaxy Store
For the past 5 years, I thought I was getting used to gesture navigation on Android phones, but when I switched to Samsung, I found the old-school navigation buttons might work better. I really liked the extra Game Booster keys when playing a game, and so on. In gesture mode, the Game Booster button could only be displayed as a bubble or line on screen, and cannot be hidden. (That may also break several games' full-screen display somehow.)
But not every apps do like the button navigation. Many of them just forget to set a padding for navigation bar, and buttons overlapped. It's really annoying when I can't touch something because of that.
Button overlapping example
Good Lock Labs' NavStar app actually has an official option to add an extra button to control the display of the navigation bar, but I don't think it looks nice, and it will be there everywhere if enabled.
The additional button on the left
So I have my own idea: using the Routines + extension. To be honest, this is far from the best solution as it's not flawless, but at least it works and won't mess things up. (And don't need third party apps.)
First, go to the Settings app, find "Modes and Routines" and add a routine, setting the condition (If) to LONG PRESSING the Recents button. (I use this button because I think most times you just won't use its long-press action. And it's also the fastest way when you get some buttons overlapped.)
Then, in the action (Then) section, find Good Lock and you'll see "Navigation Bar Style" under the "Routines +" section. In the pop-ups, select "Swipe Gestures."
So the first part is done. When long-pressing the Recents button, the phone will switch to Swipe Gesture navigation.
Example routine 1
But if we have to turn it back, that's more complicated, because in gesture mode, there are only 3 side buttons available. These buttons have already been assigned too many actions, making it hard to decide.
In the end, I chose something else: to use a blank routine.
Currently, a manual-triggered routine can only create launcher widgets (or import them to the Game Booster), so we have to go back to the launcher to activate it, or go to settings and manually switch back.
But modes could be selected from the quick panel, and it could be used as the trigger of a routine. So I created an empty mode, and used it as the condition for my second routine. There is an option to restore the navigation style after disabling the mode; this time, we uncheck it. Save this routine, then everything is done. We could use the Recent Button to activate Swipe Gestures, and use a mode to restore it. Relatively easy.
Example routine 2
Also, if you don't want to create two routines, you could just create one empty mode and use it to change the navigation style to Swipe Gestures. This time, we could leave the navigation style restoration on, so it will only change the navigation within the mode. In this case, activating the change requires you to pull down the quick panel.
Even further, we could only change the navigation style for specific apps, so no manual activation/restoration is needed.
Galaxy phones' routine is still not as powerful as iOS shortcuts, but it is already useful for simply resolving problems. If the combination could be extended, I could have done this better. I'm looking forward to future updates.
