Is the Recents soft key supposed to not work anymore?

[ultimate_ed]

Here in the last week, my Moto Z Force received the Oreo update and...it hasn't been pleasant to be honest. I'm digging through threads and googling to figure out how things work now - but there's one that I haven't been able to get any hits on - the Recents softkey on my phone has become largely useless.

When I'm on the home screen, the recents key does nothing. I've tried tapping, double tapping, long pressing - the screen acknowledges the presses with a flash around the key, but my recent apps won't appear for me so I can scroll and select something (or swipe away something that I want to get rid of).

So far, I have to go find the app's icon on the screen again and open it from there again in order to return to a recent app.

If I'm in an app, the key will open the recent apps, but only in the bottom half of the window. And, if I select something, it's stuck in the bottom half until I drag the slider between the two apps all the way up in order to get the app I want in full screen. I understand this is supposed to be the new "split screen" functionality, but so far it is just a pain and largely useless to me.

I've read a number other threads going back to last year that advised people to dig into this menu or that to reactivate things like lock screen notifications. Is there some menu or check box I need to enable to get the Recents key to start working again?

 

[Rukbat]

Open an app. Tap Recents. Choose a recent app. You may not see it but there's a little line between the two apps. Pull the line down to the bottom of the screen so the "recent" app disappears. Now close the app you opened ... and tap the Recents key. It should show you your recent apps.

Long pressing the Recents key goes into split screen, so you can choose a second app to run. (Handy if you have a password app and you want to run it and the app you need the password for at the same time. Then, after you log in, you can draw the bar up or down to close the password program.)

 

[ultimate_ed]

Well, this turned interesting. I gave the phone another restart...and now things are working as expected. Strange, but I'll take it.