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Android Design - Navigation with Back and Up
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<h2>Navigation with Back and Up</h2>
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</div>
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<div class="paging-links layout-content-col span-4">
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<a href="#" class="prev-page-link">Previous</a>
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<p>Consistent navigation is an essential component of the overall user experience. Few things frustrate
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users more than basic navigation that behaves in inconsistent and unexpected ways. Android 3.0
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introduced significant changes to the global navigation behavior. Thoughtfully following the
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guidelines for Back and Up will make your app's navigation predictable and reliable for your users.</p>
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<p>Android 2.3 and earlier relied upon the system <em>Back</em> button for supporting navigation within an
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app. With the introduction of action bars in Android 3.0, a second navigation mechanism appeared:
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the <em>Up</em> button, consisting of the app icon and a left-point caret.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_with_back_and_up.png">
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<h2>Up vs. Back</h2>
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<p>The Up button is used to navigate within an application based on the hierarchical relationships
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between screens. For instance, if screen A displays a list of items, and selecting an item leads to
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screen B (which presents that item in more detail), then screen B should offer an Up button that
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returns to screen A.</p>
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<p>If a screen is the topmost one in an app (i.e. the home of the app), it should not present an Up
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button.</p>
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<p>The system Back key is used to navigate based on the history of screens the user has recently seen,
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in reverse chronological order—in effect, the temporal relationships between screens.</p>
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<p>When the previously viewed screen is also the hierarchical parent of the current screen, pressing
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the Back key will have the same result as pressing an Up button -- this is a common occurrence.
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However, unlike the Up button, which ensures the user remains within your app, the Back key can
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return the user to the Home screen, or even to a different application.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_up_vs_back_gmail.png">
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<p>The Back key also supports a few behaviors not directly tied to screen-to-screen navigation:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Back dismisses floating windows (dialogs, popups)</li>
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<li>Back dismisses contextual action bars, and removes the highlight from the selected items</li>
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<li>Back hides the onscreen keyboard (IME)</li>
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</ul>
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<h2>Navigation Within Your App</h2>
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<h4>Navigating to screens with multiple entry points</h4>
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<p>Sometimes a screen doesn't have a strict position within the app's hierarchy, and can be reached
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from multiple entry points—e.g., a settings screen which can be navigated to from any screen
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in your app. In this case, the Up button should choose to return to the referring screen, behaving
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identically to Back.</p>
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<h4>Changing view within a screen</h4>
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<p>Changing view options for a screen does not change the behavior of Up or Back: the screen is still
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in the same place within the app's hierarchy, and no new navigation history is created.</p>
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<p>Examples of such view changes are:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Switching views using tabs and/or left-and-right swipes</li>
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<li>Switching views using a dropdown (aka collapsed tabs)</li>
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<li>Filtering a list</li>
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<li>Sorting a list</li>
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<li>Changing display characteristics (e.g. zooming)</li>
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</ul>
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<h4>Navigating between sibling screens</h4>
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<p>When your app supports navigation from a list of items to a detail view of one of those items, it's
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often desirable to support direction navigation from that item to another one which precedes or
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follows it in the list. For example, in Gmail, it's easy to swipe left or right from a conversation
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to view a newer or older one in the same Inbox. Just as when changing view within a screen, such
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navigation does not change the behavior of Up or Back.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_between_siblings_gmail.png">
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<p>However, a notable exception to this occurs when browsing between "related" detail views not tied
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together by the referring list—for example, when browsing in the Market between apps from
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the same developer, or albums by the same artist. In these cases, following each link does create
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history, causing the Back button to step through each screen of related content which has been
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viewed. Up should continue to bypass these related screens and navigate to the most recently viewed
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container screen.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_between_siblings_market1.png">
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<p>You have the ability to make the Up behavior even smarter based on your knowledge of detail
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view. If we extend our Market sample from above, imagine the user has navigated from the last Book
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viewed to the details for the Movie adaptation. In that case, Up can return to a container (Movies)
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which the user had not previously navigated through.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_between_siblings_market2.png">
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<h2>Navigation From Outside Your App</h2>
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<p>There are two categories of navigation from outside your app to screens deep within the app's
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hierarchy:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>App-to-app navigation, such as via intent completion.</li>
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<li>System-to-app navigation, such as via notifications and home screen widgets.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>Gmail provides examples of each of these. For app-to-app navigation, a "Share" intent goes directly
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to the compose screen. For system-to-app navigation, both a new message notification and a home
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screen widget can bypass the Inbox screen, taking the user directly to a conversation view.</p>
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<h4>App-to-app navigation</h4>
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<p>When navigating deep into your app's hierarchy directly from another app via an intent, Back will
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return to the referring app.</p>
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<p>The Up button is handled as follows:
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- If the destination screen is typically reached from one particular screen within your app, Up
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should navigate to that screen.
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- Otherwise, Up should navigate to the topmost ("Home") screen of your app.</p>
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<p>For example, after choosing to share a book being viewed in Market, the user navigates directly to
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Gmail's compose screen. From there, Up returns to the Inbox (which happens to be both the
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typical referrer to compose, as well as the topmost screen of the app), while Back returns to
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Market.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_from_outside_up.png">
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<h4>System-to-app navigation</h4>
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<p>If your app was reached via the system mechanisms of notifications or home screen widgets, Up
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behaves as described for app-to-app navigation, above.</p>
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<p>For the Back key, you should make navigation more predictably by inserting into the task's back
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stack the complete upward navigation path to the app's topmost screen. This way, a user who has
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forgotten how they entered your app can safely navigate to the app's topmost screen before exiting
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it.</p>
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<p>For example, Gmail's Home screen widget has a button for diving directly to its compose screen.
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After following that path, the Back key first returns to the Inbox, and from there continues to
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Home.</p>
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<img src="../static/content/navigation_from_outside_back.png">
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