Android 12: swipe up from bottom often not working

[chawke]

My Pixel 4a, ever since some 2022 Android 12 update (currently SP2A.220405.003), often becomes unresponsive to the swipe-up-from-bottom gesture when an app is open (i.e. to bring up the list of opened apps; or from that list, to close an app). The tactic feedback (single brief vibration) occurs, but nothing else happens. It gets stuck like this for at least 10-30 seconds at a time. Tried restarting. Any easy workaround (not a factory reset)?

 

[B. Diddy]

Try clearing the app cache for the Pixel Launcher in Settings>Apps, then force stop it. Now go back to the homescreen, give it a second to start back up, and see if the problem persists.

 

[chawke]

Try clearing the app cache for the Pixel Launcher in Settings>Apps, then force stop it. Now go back to the homescreen, give it a second to start back up, and see if the problem persists.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it. Unfortunately it happened again 30 minutes later.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does it also happen in Safe Mode? https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2852139?hl=en

 

[chawke]

Does it also happen in Safe Mode? https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2852139?hl=en

I had safe mode on for a half hour and didn't notice it.

The concern is, if it doesn't happen in safe mode, then that means it's a third-party app doing something in the background when this happens. Which would mean that to ultimately resolve it, I'd have to test out each of my dozens if not hundreds of third-party apps on this intermittent issue, which quite frankly could take forever with no guarantee of resolving it.

In which case I am probably better off learning to live with the issue and just find the quickest workaround, which currently seems to include minimizing the app and then bringing up the opened-app selector to re-maximize it, among potentially other steps (still trying to figure out if this is correct and/or what else is involved).

 

[B. Diddy]

Yeah, that's always the tedious thing about troubleshooting these issues. Perhaps it's a Display Over Other Apps issue -- go to Settings>Apps>Special App Access>Display Over Other Apps, and see what 3rd party apps have that permission turned on. Try disallowing it one by one for 3rd party apps to see if that makes a difference.

 

[chawke]

Yeah, that's always the tedious thing about troubleshooting these issues. Perhaps it's a Display Over Other Apps issue -- go to Settings>Apps>Special App Access>Display Over Other Apps, and see what 3rd party apps have that permission turned on. Try disallowing it one by one for 3rd party apps to see if that makes a difference.

I don't see anything enabled there that caused an issue before or should cause issues. But I can look into it further for debugging purposes. Nonetheless it seems to be an OS bug, that numerous others have experienced. This seems to be one such report of the same issue:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixe...2022/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

For now I've reported it to Google.

A modification to the workaround steps:
When it manages to get to the app selector, tap on the app again to maximize it. Then (normally) at this point it can be swiped up normally.

 

[chawke]

Here's my most up-to-date version of the workaround: When in an app, if swipe up (to bring up the opened-app selector) is not working (besides haptic feedback), swipe down to show the notification center, down again to show the full control center menu, then swipe back up twice to close the notification center. At this point the app selector should show up. However, swipe up may still not work correctly, in which case tap on an opened app via the selector to bring the app back to focus. Now, swipe controls should have reverted to normal. If all else fails, turning off the screen then unlocking usually works, although it may take more time as there's typically a delay after unlocking when this happens.

 

[chawke]

Here's my most up-to-date version of the workaround: When in an app, if swipe up (to bring up the opened-app selector) is not working (besides haptic feedback), swipe down to show the notification center, down again to show the full control center menu, then swipe back up twice to close the notification center. At this point the app selector should show up. However, swipe up may still not work correctly, in which case tap on an opened app via the selector to bring the app back to focus. Now, swipe controls should have reverted to normal. If all else fails, turning off the screen then unlocking usually works, although it may take more time as there's typically a delay after unlocking when this happens.

Multiple up-swipes (from the bottom) in quick succession also generally works and is a quicker workaround.