Back in September, Gmail for Android removed text labels from its core navigation element, and this change now makes sense as Google is making the bottom bar more persistent.
Previously, Gmail’s bottom bar would disappear as you scroll your inbox and when you open an email. Users had the option to uncheck “Hide bottom navigation on scroll” in Settings > General, but the default behavior hid the bar.
Now, opening an email keeps the bottom bar until you scroll down and it’s immediately available again by going back up. If you toggle off “Hide bottom navigation on scroll,” it will always be visible in the inbox, emails, chats, and other tabs.
In light of this change, removing the text labels for each tab makes more sense as Google wants to remove visual clutter and just have icons as the persistent element.
As such, users can now have a persistent, badged indicator of unread emails, chat (1:1 or group), and Spaces anywhere in the app. It fits into Google’s hope of making Gmail an app with three core capabilities.
On Android, this change is not widely rolled out and only live on one of our devices with version 2022.10.02. However, this behavior looks to already be implemented on iOS.
L: Bottom bar in emails | R: Current behavior
More on Gmail:
- Gmail will directly show package and delivery tracking in your inbox
- Much-needed Gmail redesign greatly simplifies settings on iOS
- Google improving Gmail search with labels and related results
- Gmail and Google News updates add iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets
Author: Abner Li
Source: 9TO5Google
