Android 10 launcher port brings new gesture animations to rooted Android 9 devices

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Android 10 brings major changes to gesture navigation, many of which are welcome improvements, but some not so much. For example, while the new transition animations to go home or switch between apps are much more fluid than they were on Android 9 Pie, the new back gesture is arguably a regression because of its interference with the sidebars in many apps. If you’re stuck on Android 9 Pie and want to try out some of the new gestures, you can flash a custom ROM (if one is available) or you can try out this modded Android 10 launcher posted on our forums.

XDA Senior Member paphonb is best known for porting the Pixel Launcher to non-Google devices and working on Lawnchair. Earlier today, he created a thread on our forums for his latest creation: a modded Android 10 launcher that works on any Android 9 Pie device rooted with Magisk. This launcher port brings the new swipe up to go home and recent apps switching transition animations, but it doesn’t bring the new gesture bar or back swipe gesture. That’s because the gesture bar and back gesture are coded into SystemUI rather than the launcher, so making a port that includes those two features is much trickier since it’ll require device-specific modifications. Here’s a video showing what swipe gestures look like on Android 9 Pie with this mod enabled:

The one downside of installing this mod is that it replaces your default launcher, whether that be Nova Launcher, Action Launcher, Lawnchair, etc. The modded launcher is based on AOSP Android 10 Launcher3, so it’s fairly barebones in terms of features.

In order to install this mod, you’ll need root access because you have to use the QuickSwitch Magisk Module to make paphonb’s launcher port the handler for the recent apps screen. Simply install the modded launcher APK, install QuickSwitch, make the modded launcher the default launcher in QuickSwitch, open the modded launcher’s settings page, and enable the flags (“ENABLE_GESTURES” and “FULL_GESTURE_MODE.”) I confirmed this works on my ASUS ZenFone 6 running Android 9 Pie-based OmniROM.

Android 10 Launcher Port for Android 9+ devices [Root]

As an added bonus, this port also brings the swipe down gesture to pull down the notification drawer. Google removed that gesture in stable Android 10, so those of you on Android Pie who install this mod will have one benefit over the users who received the latest Android OS update!