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Android Back Button issues

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Posted on by Community Power Pla...

Does anyone else find it extremely frustrating, that on Android, if the back button is pressed you have to go back through every screen you have visited on the app?

If I perform a bunch of actions within my app I will have to press the back button an abnormal amount of time to close the app, as well as this there is no way (that I could find) to add logic to the Android back button with the app.

I'm actually quite amazed that the devs have allowed this to occur in the first place.

I would really appreciate some feedback about this issue and whether anyone else finds this irritating or whether you have found a solution to this.

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Building Power Apps

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hpkeong 2,944 on at

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Hi

Why not you use your own
- Back button, such as Navigate to the Screenyouwishto or use Back() to return the screen that you navigated from?

Android back button is in-built and nothing to do with PA.

Hope I am right.

TQ

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hi Hpkeong,

Yes I already have one of those in place, but as an Android user I find it intuative to click the Android back button not the back button I have created for the app.

There must be other Android users who can relate.

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v-yamao-msft on at

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Hi dan_adaptiv,

I would agree with what @hpkeong has suggested. When we run an app on Android phone, press the back button, we will have to go back through every screen we have visited. We are not able to go to the screen we want directly. I assume it should be a default behavior of Android phone.

While when working with PowerApps, we could consider to use Navigate or Back function to return to the screen you want to be navigated to.

Best regards,
Mabel Mao

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Community Power Pla... on at

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I'm inviting my customer to consider using PowerApps.
Whenever we click the Android native Back Button, it will directly show "Close the app?".
What the behavior you design for PowerApps?
Shouldn't it just go back to the parent page where I just came from? You just want to "Close the app?"?!

This behavior has not been welcomed by my customer and me.
And I don't think they'll adapt it in a short time.

The bahavior of "Android Native Back Button" of PowerApps should just return to the parent page.
And when return to the topmost level, then you can show "Close the app?" when click the Back Button.

Don't know if you really consider it's an issue. But we do.

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arneklein 3 on at

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I fully agree. The Android Developer Guides explicitly discourage the kind of navigation PowerApps uses:
"Back navigation is how users move backward through the history of screens they previously visited. All Android devices provide a Back button for this type of navigation, so your app should not add a Back button to the UI."
I could imagine that PowerApps don't use the Back button because PowerApps are platform-independent, and iOS doesn't provide a native Back button. That being said, PowerApps' use of the Android Back button is extremely frustrating because its behavior is completely unexpected for every Android user.
Here's a suggestion to make 'back' navigation work whether a OS-native Back button is available or not: Design each PowerApps screen as if no Back button is available (that is, add a 'Back' navigation icon on each screen), but allow the PowerApps developer to bind the OS-native Back button to a navigation icon. This way the app will work on iOS and Android alike, but the familiar Android navigation patterns won't be broken by the app either.
Spoiler (Highlight to read)
Ironically, Windows 10 has almost the same issue when used in tablet mode: Using the Windows 10-native Back button always returns to the app switcher instead of triggering an app's back navigation, at least in Win32 apps. Web browsers without gesture control (e.g. Firefox) are very cumbersome to use this way, because the conveniently reachable 'back' button always takes you to the app switcher instead of triggering history.back(), and the browser navigation buttons are a screen length's distance away from your fingers.
Ironically, Windows 10 has almost the same issue when used in tablet mode: Using the Windows 10-native Back button always returns to the app switcher instead of triggering an app's back navigation, at least in Win32 apps. Web browsers without gesture control (e.g. Firefox) are very cumbersome to use this way, because the conveniently reachable 'back' button always takes you to the app switcher instead of triggering history.back(), and the browser navigation buttons are a screen length's distance away from your fingers.

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