I Like the New Back Gesture in IOS 26 Better Than Android’s (When It Works)
Unlike Android, the iPhone has never had a physical back button. You need to somehow get back to the previous page in various apps, and instead of a button, Apple found a decent solution in the back gesture. It requires you to swipe from the left edge of the iPhone screen to the right, and while it doesn’t work in every app, most have adopted it. While the gesture is great, it can be difficult to reach for right-handed people (especially on larger iPhones), as it requires you to extend your thumb all the way to the left. iOS 26 makes this much easier.
Once you start using iOS 26 , you’ll notice that the back gesture has changed. You can swipe right from almost anywhere on the screen to go back. It feels much more intuitive than swiping from the left edge. I tried it in several of Apple’s own apps, including Mail, Podcasts, and Settings, and it works pretty well in all cases. One notable omission is Safari, which retains the old back gesture. That’s understandable: Safari lets you go back a page by swiping right from the left edge, and it also lets you move forward a page by swiping left from the right edge of the screen.
Back gestures on iOS 26 and Android
In some ways, iOS 26’s back gesture is better than Android’s back gesture . While Android lets you swipe from either edge of your phone’s screen to go back (assuming you have gesture-based navigation enabled on your phone), iOS 26’s back gesture is easier to remember: Swipe right to go back, no matter where you are on the screen. The gesture has already become part of my daily routine on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, where reaching to the opposite edge of the screen is a task and a half.
However, I’m frustrated with the current implementation of this gesture because it doesn’t always work. When I open a chat in Messages, I still have to swipe right from the left edge. In other apps, you can sometimes encounter a conflicting gesture that can prevent you from going back. For example, in Mail, you have to swipe on an empty part of the screen to go back. If you swipe on any of your emails, the standard Mail swipe right gesture is activated, and it shows you the option to mark the email as read or snooze it.
This may be a matter of adapting to the various quirks of iOS, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that iOS 26 is still in its first developer beta, so some rough edges are to be expected. I’m excited to see how much polish it gets over the course of the beta cycle, and most importantly, how well third-party apps will use the gesture to their advantage.