How to Bring Back the Vertical Swipe to Reply Feature on Google Phone
The Google Phone app is the latest in a series of apps to use Android’s new Material 3 Expressive design language . That means larger buttons, customizable fonts, louder accent themes, and, in the case of the Phone app, a fundamental design overhaul.
As far as I can remember, the default gesture for answering calls in the Google Phone app has always been a vertical swipe, the complete opposite of the iPhone’s horizontal swipe-to-answer gesture. I loved it. It was reliable, robust, and very resilient to mis-swipes and imprecise answers.
But with this update, Google has changed the default gesture to be more like the one Apple uses on the iPhone, though not exactly the same. There’s now a new horizontal swipe: swiping left will reject a call, and swiping right will answer it.
But it’s not for everyone. If you have years of muscle memory for the old way of answering calls, the new implementation won’t be as reliable as it once was. If that sounds weird, you have two options.
Embrace Buttons
If you don’t like the new gestures, Google has an alternative: buttons. Buttons are reliable, easy to use, and less likely to crash.
To switch from a swipe gesture to a button answer, open the Google Phone app, tap the three-line menu button in the upper-left corner, and select Settings . Go to the Incoming call gesture section and select the appropriate option. In the pop-up that appears, select Single tap .
Now when you get a call, you will have two separate buttons: “Answer” and “Reject”. Wow, that’s much better.
Uninstall the latest Google Phone update.
If answering calls with buttons isn’t your thing, you can also roll back the Phone app to a previous version. That’s because the new Google Phone app offers a lot of new features beyond the call screen, though your mileage may vary.
The new update removes the Contacts tab (you’ll now have to use the Contacts app to view your contacts in more detail), but adds new tools like Business Cards with full-screen contact photos (again, just like on the iPhone). The contact photo won’t automatically appear on the recipient’s end, as it does on Apple’s OS, but it’s a nice touch. The entire interface is also now bright and colorful, though your opinion on that will likely be more subjective.
If you don’t mind losing these changes or you absolutely hate them, you can get rid of them by bringing back the old vertical swipe. Since the Google Phone app adds new features through the Play Store, going back to the old version is easy and without downgrading the OS.
To do this, go to Settings > Apps > Phone and tap the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner. Here, select Uninstall updates . In the window that appears, tap OK . In just a few seconds, Google will uninstall the new Phone app update and everything will go back to how it was before. The old Favorites screen will become the default screen, the Contacts tab will return, and the old vertical gesture for answering a call will be restored.