Hello everyone! I have a rooted Nexus 7 running the latest version of KitKat, and despite being an amazing tablet, I do have one issue with it: The screen is too small to have the status bar on the top and the navigation bar on the bottom. It just takes up too much screen real estate, especially in landscape mode. And while KitKat did introduce Immersive Mode, it really only works on a very tiny minority of apps. I'm currently running an app called Hide Soft Keys, which auto-hides the navigation bar. I've taken some screenshots to demonstrate how it works:
All you need to do is swipe up from the bottom to activate the nav bar. As you can see, you gain a significant amount of extra screen space. Unfortunately, the app is a little glitchy; I often have to reactivate the app when I wake my N7 just to get it to work again. Also, swiping up a hidden nav bar sounds like a good idea on paper, but after a week of use I already feel like it hurts the overall user experience rather than enhance it.
I think I would much rather combine the nav bar and status bar on the bottom, like you see on some Android tablets:
I feel like this split action bar is much better for tablets, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find a way to make this happen, especially on an N7 running KitKat. Can anyone help me out here?
Also, I'm already using KK Launcher to give my N7 a more KitKat-like feel. (This is why my status bar is transparent in my screenshots, by the way). I love the customizations this launcher provides, soooo if it's at all possible, I'd like to keep running KK Launcher while still having a split nav/status bar on the bottom. I'm only saying this because I'd imagine there's probably a custom launcher out there that has a split bottom bar option.
All you need to do is swipe up from the bottom to activate the nav bar. As you can see, you gain a significant amount of extra screen space. Unfortunately, the app is a little glitchy; I often have to reactivate the app when I wake my N7 just to get it to work again. Also, swiping up a hidden nav bar sounds like a good idea on paper, but after a week of use I already feel like it hurts the overall user experience rather than enhance it.
I think I would much rather combine the nav bar and status bar on the bottom, like you see on some Android tablets:
I feel like this split action bar is much better for tablets, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find a way to make this happen, especially on an N7 running KitKat. Can anyone help me out here?
Also, I'm already using KK Launcher to give my N7 a more KitKat-like feel. (This is why my status bar is transparent in my screenshots, by the way). I love the customizations this launcher provides, soooo if it's at all possible, I'd like to keep running KK Launcher while still having a split nav/status bar on the bottom. I'm only saying this because I'd imagine there's probably a custom launcher out there that has a split bottom bar option.
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