Today I’m going to walk you through a step by step guide on exactly how to hide the Navigation Bar on Android. This will not disable it completely(I’ll talk about that tomorrow), but it will hide it and allow you to bring it back anytime you want.
Note – This tutorial will show you how to enable immersive mode which will temporarily hide the Navigation Bar. However, if you want to keep the Navigation Bar hidden then follow this updated tutorial linked here.
Google introduced Immersive Mode into Android 4.4 KitKat as a way for your applications, games and movies to make full use of the screen. This is one of my favorite features because it gave you a way to eliminate all of the distractions and let you focus on exactly what you wanted to.
Sadly though, in order to enjoy this feature, the 3rd party application developer has to add the code and make sure the app scales and still work properly. Not many developers want to do this and there’s some that just don’t have the time.
So this is where a separate 3rd party application comes into play. The application is called GMD Full Screen Immersive Mode and you can download it in the Google Play Store for free. Once you have it downloaded and installed, all you have to do is open it up and set it up. So let’s go through the step by step guide on how to do this. . .
Hide Navigation Bar
- Download GMD Full Screen Immersive Mode
- Open the App and Read the Warning
- Tap on OK to Dismiss the Warning
- Tap on General
- Tap the Start On Boot Option
- Tap the Invisible Icon Option
- Exit the Application
- Pull Down the Notification Panel
- Tap on the Second Icon to Hide the Navigation Bar
Explanation
Let’s go ahead and explain what all of this is and what you are doing. When you first open up the application you are given a warning about how the keyboard will sometimes not function if the navigation bar is hidden. This means that when you do not see the navigation bar, and you tap on an input box, the keyboard will usually not appear. You will have to swipe up from the bottom, aka making the navigation bar reappear, in order to make the keyboard appear. This isn’t a big deal for a lot of people but it’s something that everyone should know before you use this application.
So, after we dismiss the keyboard warning we are greeted with the Main Menu. The four options here are General, Trigger, Applications, and Upgrade. For typical use, we only need to make some changes in the General page. After we tap on General, we see four new options. Notification, Invisible Icon, Start on Boot and Disable in Lockscreen. If you do not want the notification for this application in the Notification Panel then you should disable this option. If you disable it then you will not have easy access to the trigger this setting. It’s not really needed, but sometimes it’s nice to have a quick way to enable and disable this application.
For most people, they will set up this application how they want and then never open it again. If you disable it from the Notification Panel then you will not have to hide the icon with the Invisible Icon option. The Start On Boot option is exactly that, telling the application to automatically hide your Navigation Bar when you boot up the device. The Disable in Lockscreen option is exactly that too, enabling this feature will disable immersive mode when you are at the lock screen.
When we go back to the Main Menu we can check out the Trigger options. The trigger is the colored line that you see at the bottom of your screen after you have hidden the Navigation Bar. Some of these options are available in the free version, but as we can see, some of them require the PRO version. The PRO version costs $3.32 USD and that might sound expensive at first, but if you use this feature enough then 3 dollars isn’t really that much. Buying the application lets us configure the various options like Trigger color, Trigger theme and the transparency of the Trigger.
Here we can see the application in action. Not only can it hide the Navigation Bar but it can also hide the Status Bar. So, let’s take a look at the three options that we see in this Notification Panel. We see the application icon and then the word Immersive to let us know exactly what this notification is for. Toward the right of the notification we see three different images. These are options that we can tap on and this is what I’m talking about in step 9 of this tutorial. The first icon will revert all changes that this application has made. So, if you don’t like having your status bar or Navigation Bar hidden all the time then you can tap on the first icon and disable it.
The second icon that we see let’s us hide the Navigation Bar but keep the Status Bar visible. This is how I personally like to use the application. I like to have the Status Bar visible all the time so I can see the status bar icons, notification icons and the time. The very last icon that we see will hide both the Status Bar and the Notification Bar at the same time. Anytime you make the Navigation Bar appear the Status Bar will appear with it.
Once this application is activated you can hide the Navigation Bar and make it appear by simply swiping or tapping on the colored trigger at the bottom of the screen. You don’t have to keep swiping down the Notification Panel each time you want to enter Immersive Mode. This can still be a hassle though so if you are trying to disable the Navigation Bar entirely then be sure to come back tomorrow for a brand new tutorial. I will edit this article and link to it when it’s ready.
If for any reason this tutorial doesn’t work for you(sometimes applications change after I have published an article), then please leave a comment at the bottom of this article to let me know. You can also ask your questions in the comments here and I will help anyone that I can. You are welcome to experiment all you want with this application and if you don’t like it you can simply uninstall it. Uninstalling this application will revert any changes that you have previously made and brings the Navigation Bar and Status Bar back to how it normally is.
Thanks