Google adds Predictive Back gesture to Gmail in Android 14

Google was supposed to offer the Predictive Back feature system-wide on Android 14. With this gesture, an Android user employing the back gesture can see a preview of the page he is going back to. This has been a big deal for app developers because it turned out that many times an Android user, not knowing exactly where the back gesture would take him, accidentally backed out of an app not intending to do so. And this resulted in the app receiving some negative metrics which its developer wasn't happy about.

As we noted, the predictive back gesture shows an Android user a preview of where he will be taken to if he uses the back gesture. There are only three possible destinations: a previous page in the same app, a previous app, or the home screen. The back gesture on Android requires the user to slowly swipe left from the right side of the screen until a left-facing arrow inside a circle appears. Once the user pulls his finger off of the display, he goes back to the previous page. The same thing is accomplished by slowly swiping to the right from the left side of the display, letting go when a right-facing arrow inside a circle shows up on the display.

Google still has not enabled predictive back with Android 14 and it still must be toggled on by going to Settings > Developer options > Predictive back animations: Enable system animations for predictive back. 9to5 Google recently spotted the Predictive Back Gesture in version 2024.03.03.x of Gmail when closing an email. When starting the back gesture, the email you are closing shrinks to show rounded corners, and a small preview of the page you are going back to appears behind the page you're currently viewing.

The Predictive Back gesture can also be spotted on Google Calendar's monthly overview and the day view. Hopefully, we will see the feature appear on more system apps, and with Google asking third-party app developers to use it, we might see the Predictive Back feature eventually become available on most Android apps.