Add ability to slide menu out from the left

Feature request
#1

Please note that this is simply my opinion. You or someone else may have a different opinion and different way of using the app.

App version: 2.0.0-RC7 (4ddee0321), beta from Google play.

Feature you want: I’m interested in seeing the ability to open the hamburger menu by sliding from left to right. And the reverse to close the menu.

I have a couple of other apps with this feature and it has become a muscle memory to do so. But it also related to how I use the app.

My default view is my queue. However I subscribe to nearly 50 different podcasts and sometimes I want to check an episode for a specific one. I open the hamburger menu and scroll to find the specific one. At least for me, access would be easier if I could slide from left to right to open the menu, in addition to using the hamburger menu.

Suggested solution: I have no idea. I don’t know what language you use to program the app.

#2

Don’t know if I understood you correctly but for what it’s worth sliding from left edge to right already open lateral menu. And you can close it swiping right to left.

#3

Ok, that’s great to hear! Cheers for the quick response.

Maybe I’m missing something. Or possibly it’s because I have gestures turned on for Android. When I try to swipe laterally from right to left, it only attempts to close the app.

#4

I don’t use gestures on my device but tested it and default gesture when sliding left to right is to close app.

How do you do it on other apps where it works? I tried Antenna (of course) and google store and I was unable to slide to open lateral menu. How does it work for apps where it’s working for you?

#5

Hmmmm… Good question. Let me play around a little and I’ll get back to you.

#6

I think this feature should be expanded. Do this like Replay for reddit, where you can swipe from anywhere in the screen to open the hamburger menu. It will work better for gesture systems too

#7

Okay, so I played around with it a little more. It is definitely impacted by having gestures enabled in Android. This applies to AntennaPod, the Play Store, and others.

I did manage to find a couple of spots that were “less sensitive” to the Android gestures that enabled me to slide the lateral menu open. Even reducing the sensitivity in the Android settings did nothing to improve it.

#8

This is an interesting idea that expands on this.

You could have default settings for swipe, but could also change them.

For example, say I am listening to podcast XYZ and have three episodes that I have not listened to. I listen to episode 2 first. I find it very interesting and want to listen again later. Swipe left gives a star to the episode as favorite. Swipe right on the episode marks it as played (or unplayed). This could include any of the options from the popup menu when you press and hold an episode.

If you have Android with gestures enabled, in app gestures work much better when they do not originate at the edge of the device screen. Something like this could potentially minimize those problems.

#9

That’d be a nice thing actually, yes. I use Outlook for work, and there it’s possible to set the left & right swipe actions (though you have a limited set of options, which keeps the interface clear). To have that for the ‘queue’ and the ‘all episodes’ screens would be awesome.

In-app gestures would be nice, but that wouldn’t cover the use case in your original post: opening the side menu. I think that’s just an inevitable downside of Android gestures, then (given that this also affects Google Play) - and not really fixable.

#10

That’s the exact idea!

Yes, I understand that. This has kind of morphed into something different. I didn’t realize what I stated in the original post already exists.

1 Like
#11

Swiping left and right will not work on many screens (sub screens of “episodes” and “downloads”) because that interferes with tab switching. Intuitively, I feel like swiping is a gesture that should only remove things, not change them.

#12

Yes, with the current screen it would’t work. But honestly, I think changing that interface could bring a big improvement. I imagine (in short):

  • one screen for ‘favourites’
  • one screen for ‘episodes’
    • A) remove tabs altogether by adding a ‘new’ toggle in the bar, or
    • B) add a ‘filter’ bar similar to the multi-select bar that we had earlier (but icon-only)

This would open up the opportunity to introduce swipe actions, and greatly improve the workflow of reviewing new episodes manually to either remove the new label (to prevent auto-download) or add episodes to the queue. For me personally, that’d be a bless.

Note that quite a few bigger applications use swiping for ‘positive’ actions:

  • Outlook: ‘flag’, ‘snooze’, ‘move to folder’
  • GitHub: ‘save’ (kinda bookmark), ‘mark as done’
  • Gmail: ‘mark as read/unread’, ‘move to’
  • Signal: ‘reply’
1 Like