How to access Google Assistant when using Gesture navigation on Samsung Galaxy devices

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October 04, 2019

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2 min read

After a lackluster spell with TouchWiz UI, Samsung finally decided to refresh the user interface of supported devices and introduced us to One UI in the penultimate month of 2018. Based on Android 9 Pie, One UI came as a breath of fresh air to most users, as intrusive bloatware was dialed down to zero.

From the system-wide Night mode to one-handed assistance and more, One UI brought a plethora of usability enhancements, something we didn’t get with TouchWiz. As most of these changes are aimed at making life easier for end-users, it’s hardly a surprise that the South Korean OEM didn’t forget about the most popular digital assistant on the planet — Google Assistant.

Samsung has been trying its best to help us see the light and embrace the company’s very own Bixby Assistant. Bixby isn’t as bad as most people seem to think, but it doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking. So, it isn’t a surprise that most Samsung users have stayed loyal to Google’s all-powerful digital assistant.

Now, we all know that long-pressing the Home button fires up the Google Assistant. But if you’re using full-screen gestures on your Samsung smartphone, you’ll need to learn a new trick to trigger the Assistant.

Related:

Here’s how to fire up Google Assistant when using full-screen gestures:

As you must have already figured out, swiping up (bottom edge) from the left of your screen opens the Recent Apps menu, while swiping up from the middle and swiping up from the right-hand side takes you Home and to the previous page, respectively.

Now, to turn on Google Assistant, all you have to do is swipe up from the middle (down from the edge) and hold for a second. Upon completion of the step, Google Assistant will pop up in the bottom half of your screen.

So, here it is once again: