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Help Always show the navigation bar? Completely disable fullscreen mode?

T

thedoctr

Lurker
So I searched a bunch for answers on this, but came up short – so sorry if this is duplicative.

Is there any way to prevent all apps from ever hiding the navigation bar? I ALWAYS want to see the navigation bar, full stop. I NEVER want fullscreen mode. Not in a game, not when watching a video, DON'T TOUCH MY NAVBAR!

Is this possible? Is it possible to get close?

inb4: I have exactly zero interest in switching to gestures. I try them with every new phone and new android version and while I won't say never, so far gestures don't do it for me. I want my nav bar. I'd like it to be more configurable, but right now I'd be happy if I could just get this demon machine to always show me my three little buttons.

ADB solutions welcome.

Thanks!
 
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just to be sure, you are talking about the notification bar, right? if so then i do not think you can do this. it will depend on the app which i believe most are optimized to be at fullscreen. curious as to why you need to see the notification bar?
 
ocnbrze said:
just to be sure, you are talking about the notification bar, right? if so then i do not think you can do this. it will depend on the app which i believe most are optimized to be at fullscreen. curious as to why you need to see the notification bar?
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Sorry, no I mean the navigation bar –– the three buttons on the bottom. I misspoke in the second sentence of the original post. Fixed now.
 
thedoctr said:
Sorry, no I mean the navigation bar –– the three buttons on the bottom. I misspoke in the second sentence of the original post. Fixed now.
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ahhh i see......on my note 10+ in settings>display>navigation bar>there are some options there for full screen gestures. it might be different on the s20. if anything go to settings and do a search for the nav bar for more options.
 
ocnbrze said:
ahhh i see......on my note 10+ in settings>display>navigation bar>there are some options there for full screen gestures. it might be different on the s20. if anything go to settings and do a search for the nav bar for more options.
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Yeah no dice, the only settings option I can find are gestures, button order, and something called "single-tap navigation" which I enabled, but doesn't do anything as far as I can tell (I think it's related to screen reader mode or something).
 

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ok that second screenshot was i was talking about. but it looks like you have it set right. so it goes away when you are using an app? is it all apps or just some? are you using a custom launcher?
 
ocnbrze said:
ok that second screenshot was i was talking about. but it looks like you have it set right. so it goes away when you are using an app? is it all apps or just some? are you using a custom launcher?
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Just some apps. Games, video players, my RSS reader app will hide it when scrolling content, sometimes others that I can't think of OTOH.

I'm using Nova Launcher. Thanks for responding, btw!
 
hmmmmm that is weird maybe check their settings. it does not happen on my note 10+ much. but yeah movie players and games will turn off the nav bar, but i think for obvious reasons.

edit: youtube and netflix do not. well with netflix it turns it off when playing the movie, but when you tap the screen to pause, it will show up again.
 
ocnbrze said:
hmmmmm that is weird maybe check their settings. it does not happen on my note 10+ much. but yeah movie players and games will turn off the nav bar, but i think for obvious reasons.

edit: youtube and netflix do not. well with netflix it turns it off when playing the movie, but when you tap the screen to pause, it will show up again.
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Yeah, I mean I get why those apps think they should do that. I'll even buy the argument that most people _want_ the navbar to disappear in those situations. But I don't, so I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent apps going fullscreen all the time, no matter what.
I basically want to disable the setSystemUiVisibility SDK call.
 
thedoctr said:
Yeah, I mean I get why those apps think they should do that. I'll even buy the argument that most people _want_ the navbar to disappear in those situations. But I don't, so I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent apps going fullscreen all the time, no matter what.
I basically want to disable the setSystemUiVisibility SDK call.
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I'm not a dev of course, but I think you'd need to have a suitably modified custom ROM built to do that.
 
thedoctr said:
Yeah, I mean I get why those apps think they should do that. I'll even buy the argument that most people _want_ the navbar to disappear in those situations. But I don't, so I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent apps going fullscreen all the time, no matter what.
I basically want to disable the setSystemUiVisibility SDK call.
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the only way to do that is to root the the phone, unfortunately. and if you have the snapdragon version of the s20, then good luck with that. i do not know what else you can do to about the nav bar. i did find some navigation bar apps in the play store that might be what you are looking for. check them out and let us know which one works for you.
 
@ op. Hi,
I know this thread is quite dated but my quest to solve this same problem landed me here.
I hope you found a solution to this?

Also I can't believe at this day & age we don't still have the option to be able to switch on/off this setting at will.
I used to own an LG G8X and I love the fact that this option was baked into the phone settings by default.
There was an LG graphics setting app that featured what they called "app scaling" which, sadly Samsung fails to have.
This app scaling feature essentially allows you to set options specifically for each app either you want an app to run full screen or not, and the scaling feature also allows you to set certain resolutions so this way when I disable full screen resolution for my game, the nav bar stays permanently on. Also, there was a way to swipe and call up the nav bar during full screen game then click a button on the side of the game ui to lock it in place.
And tbh honest I really don't want a portrait orientation game to automatically take up my whole screen, I much rather prefer if it's scaled down to a slightly smaller resolution so I can have black bars at top and bottom of my screen while the nav bar also stays on.

Unfortunately LG dropped out of the smartphone race and I needed to upgrade my phone.. So...
I moved from the LG to Samsung s21u then s22u, sadly it's a real issue on the Samsung.

Hopefully one day, Samsung will also incorporate this into their ui update.

I don't want to have to root this phone cos of just this, I'm just really hoping someone has already figured out how to solve this issue.
 
In the same boat, hate it when my navbar goes missing and I have to rely on questionable gestures. For me it isn't so much about having the navbar as it is having the gestures interrupt a gaming session
 
You mean the gesture of swiping up from the bottom to reveal the navbar? That's the only extra gesture that I have when in full screen mode (I also use a navbar rather than gesture navigation).

My s21 has an option in the settings to set some apps to use full-screen mode that don't normally force it, but I note that none of the apps that normally force the phone into full screen mode are on the list, i.e. I can't use that setting to deny full-screen access to apps that do insist on it.

Anyway, you can probably forget about a native "fix" (in quotes because this is a design feature, not a bug). Google have committed to their (very iPhone-like) gesture navigation as the default. They may retain the option of a navbar for those who prefer it (they have so far), but there's no reason to expect them to add features for it - in fact they've done nothing with navigation for the last couple of major versions. Personally I think it's more likely that they'll remove the navbar at some point in the future than it is that they'll provide an option for it to override full-screen mode.

So it's Catch-22: the only way to get a permanent navbar is to buy a phone that's so old that it has actual navigation buttons, but that probably won't run the games you want (and if it does, how long will it last?).
 
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