You probably have been using gesture-based navigation on your Android for years without thinking about it. That little pill at the bottom of the screen is delightful to use and barely takes up any space. But when you switch to buttons, like I’ve done, you enable several key features that make Android better. For example, enabling buttons gives you the ability to better control when the keyboard is showing, it enables the fastest possible way to switch between apps, and even Circle to Search gets better.

Here’s what you can do if you go back to Android buttons.

Android buttons can do more

But everyone moved on to gestures

Switching to buttons is easy, and you’d be surprised how quickly you acclimate to it, especially if you’ve been using Android for many years when Android phones used to exclusively use buttons.

If you’re on a Samsung Galaxy, just go to Settings > Display > Navigation Bar > Buttons.

If you have a Pixel, go to Settings > Display & touch > Navigation mode > 3-button navigation.

Easily dismiss the keyboard when you don’t want it

Buttons let you do that

Buttons immediately solve one of the biggest problems in Android — when filling out a form or browsing a long website that requires your input, the keyboard can be a nuisance and block key elements on the screen. With buttons, you get a persistent keyboard hiding down arrow on the bottom right anytime the keyboard is open, making it easy to open and hide the keyboard as needed.

When you’re not using a keyboard, the down button reverts to the system-wide back button, which makes going back in various apps easier than the sometimes-finicky back gesture in Android that can be difficult to trigger.

The fastest possible way to switch apps

It’s like ALT+Tab on a PC, but faster

On a PC, you can press ALT+Tab on your keyboard, whether Windows or Mac, to instantly toggle between your two most recent apps. When you switch to buttons on Android, double-tapping the Recents button offers this same functionality, and it’s the fastest way to switch apps, especially if you shorten screen animations as well.

The best way to set this up is to open the two apps you want to toggle between, one after the other. Then those two apps will be the most recent, and double-tapping the recents button will toggle between the two.

You can change the button order

Depending on whether you are right or left-handed, it might make more sense to have the back button on the left or right. On both Galaxy and Pixel, you get a “More Options” or “Settings” button in the navigation bar settings where you can pick the order of your buttons, which will swap the order of the Back and Recents button. You might opt to swap the order of the buttons specifically to place the Recents button closer to your dominant thumb if you use the Recents buttons more than the Back button.

Circle to Search is easier to access

Just press and hold on the Home button

Circle to Search in Android has gotten really good at identifying what you see on your screen, but it’s only useful if you can quickly trigger it. Switching to Android buttons lets you tap and hold on the home button to bring up Circle to Search from any screen, letting you instantly identify products (and buy them in some cases), copy text, translate a menu or street sign, and overall just turn whatever you’re seeing on your screen to something more useful (though perhaps Siri AI is a little bit smarter with on-screen awareness).

Buttons are better, but gestures still win in some areas

There are a few notable downsides to using buttons versus sticking with gestures. First, buttons take up more screen real estate, effectively taking up approximately 48 pixels for buttons on a Pixel, versus just 24 pixels for the gesture bar. On a larger screen (where there are options to make one-handed use easier), this hardly makes a difference, but if you have a phone with a smaller screen, you might not have the extra pixels to spare and might stick with gestures.

An important note: when you enable buttons, you kill the Android back gesture (where you swipe in from the edge of the screen to go back). That was fine with me, as I found the persistent back button to be better anyhow, but if you like using the back gesture, switching to buttons might be a deal-breaker for you.

The other thing you lose is the ability to slide horizontally on the gesture area to move between open apps. I think the Alt-Tab rapid app switching with the double press of the Recent button makes up for this, but if you’re toggling between more than two apps on a regular basis, you might prefer gesture navigation.

But for me, buttons are genuinely better, and I’m not going back to gestures because I love the shortcuts and added functionality I get with buttons.