With the rise in foldable phones, and the resurgence of the Android tablet, Google has been ramping up its efforts to make Android’s UI work well on larger screens. I’m not going to tell you it’s all done, but we have seen some exciting results from this work.
Android finally has its own taskbar: a dock bar that lives along the bottom of every screen to help you switch between apps. When it first appeared, the taskbar was more like a random product feature shot out of a development gun. But gradually, it evolved into something interesting: a tool for the extensive workspace and multitasking.
The Android taskbar looked nothing like any Windows taskbar (even though that’s likely where they got the inspiration from) and it completely disappeared after Android 12. One thing that never changed is where the taskbar became available: on large-screen devices. That might change with an upcoming Android 15 release, though. Google is finally preparing to bring the taskbar to phones.
Android 15 May Bring ‘Tiny’ Taskbar to Phones: Google’s Latest Multitasking Experiment
Google is experimenting with bringing the tablet taskbar to phones running Android 15.
Android’s taskbar is currently only shown on large-screen devices like tablets and book-style foldables.
The ‘tiny’ taskbar – visually identical to the tablet taskbar, just scaled down to the dimensions of phone screens.
The first version, implemented in 2022’s Android 12L release – an Android release targeting large-screen media-centric devices – lived at the bottom of the screen, as removed icons from the user’s dock on their home screen. It was always displayed in the front and filled the full width of the display, like all prior taskbars on desktop operating systems. By default, as of Android 13, Google made the taskbar hideable by long-pressing on any blank part of it.
Most of the Android tablets have enough screen real estate to accommodate the always-on-screen taskbar comfortably, but that’s not the case with foldables of book style, and that’s why Google’s engine for bringing back the taskbar to foldables is taking a different direction: it’s now transient.
With the second quarterly platform release (QPR) of Android 13, Google has revamped the taskbar to show temporarily on the screen; that is, it shows on screen for a particular duration, and then goes away automatically if you don’t interact with it within that time. It takes a lot less space but adds some more friction to the multitasking stuff. Google is adding a button to bring back the old style of taskbar in Android 15 for those who prefer the old one.
Hence, once Android 15 is rolled out to tablets and book-like foldables, they’ll gain instant access to both flavours of Android’s taskbar.
But Google hasn’t yet gotten around to supporting Android’s own taskbar – called ‘overlay’ in developer parlance – on its smaller devices, specifically smartphones and most tablets, unless you switch the display scaling, which might make everything impossible to see and interact with in most apps. This is another reason Google is already working on small-screen versions of the Android taskbar so you don’t have to fiddle with the text or display scaling in the first place to reap those multitasking benefits.
Viewing Android 15 Beta 4, I saw references to the feature, perceived it to be very small, and in another window I enabled it (its configuration is currently disabled by default) as I could not resist: here is what the experience is like, in a video:
In fact, as you can see in the video, the thing in the taskbar that looks ‘tiny’, and that acts the way you’d expect a tiny thing to act, is the same taskbar that’s there on a regular Wide-Screen Experience. The best part is that I didn’t have to screw around with any text or display scaling to get this ‘tiny’ taskbar.
Unfortunate for me, I do not know the timeframe during which Google plans to release this “mini” taskbar. I think it is not in a finished form at the moment, since you can see two navigation grips when you turn on this feature (as you can see in Beta 4 images). I hope that Google will polish the “mini” taskbar and release it in one of the earlier QPRs in Android 15, not at the end. I honestly don’t know whether this feature will ever see the light of day, let alone this year. However, very much hoping that it’s not the case!
What do y’all think of this ‘little’ taskbar? Luce answers: Comment below!
