Android 12 Beta 3: You can now disable Google Assistant corner swipe activation

Damien Wilde | Jul 14 2021 - 11:40 am PT

With the removal of the awesome Active Edge in recent Pixel devices, the corner swipe activation gesture was seen as the replacement. In Android 12 Beta 3, you’re now able to completely deactivate the Assistant corner swipe.

For devices without a dedicated Google Assistant button or another activation method, the corner swipe gesture was a fairly simple but effective way to quickly access your on-device AI helper. In Android 12, the water has muddied somewhat with multiple methods of activation, including via the back-tap Quick Tap and Power button long press.

These options joined the corner swipe and hands-free voice activation in recent Android Beta builds, making it very easy to accidentally have the Google Assistant pop-up and encounter some frustrations. With Android 12 Beta 3, you now have the ability to fully deactivate the corner swipe for the first time.

For people that might not want to even access the Assistant, this might be the perfect solution as all other methods can be disabled at any time. For some reason, the corner swipe was persistent and could sometimes interfere with the gesture navigation method. Likely because of that, within the gesture navigation settings, you can toggle the activation method — as this does not affect the 3-button navbar.

To enable or disable the Assistant corner, swipe ahead to Settings > Gestures > System navigation > Swipe to invoke the assistant.

A weird notable is that the Pixel Launcher has also changed the Assistant logo to a microphone icon. It’s not clear if this is related to this new ability to deactivate the corner swipe gesture and, therefore, place less prominence on the Assistant.