Giving your emails space, when they need it
An app’s user experience is ultimately the sum of a whole slew of factors, including what UI elements look like, where they are placed, and when they’re visible. Google is certainly aware of this, embracing Material You guidelines in a big way to keep things consistent across its apps — and their website equivalents. Now, the Gmail app is picking up a subtle tweak to its bottom navigation bar for easily jumping around between Gmail, Meet, Chat, and Spaces.
So far, the Gmail app has hid the bottom bar by default when you opened an email or scrolled through your inbox. 9to5Google observes that now, the bottom bar remains when you open an email, disappearing only when you scroll down. If you scroll the other way, the bar comes back into view.
Text-heavy apps like email clients and note keepers are always at risk of looking cluttered, and Gmail is no exception. The app recently shed icon labels from its bottom navigation bar, which could have just driving force that led to this latest change.
If you find the new behavior inconvenient and would rather have the bottom bar accompany you through every screen in the app, you can simply uncheck the “Hide bottom navigation on scroll” option in General Settings.
If you aren’t seeing the new behavior on your device, that’s no cause for concern. So far Google doesn’t seem to be rolling it out widely on Android, even though most iOS devices reportedly have it already. Hopefully it should hit everyone soon.
