I Like iOS 26's New Back Gesture Better Than Android’s (When It Works)

Unlike Android, the iPhone has never had a physical back button. You need some way to go back to the previous page in various apps, and rather than a button, Apple found a decent solution in the back gesture. It requires you to swipe from the left edge of the iPhone's screen towards the right, and while it doesn't work in all apps, most have adopted it. As good as this gesture is, it can be hard to reach for right-handed people (especially on large iPhones) since it requires you to extend your thumb all the way to the left. iOS 26 makes this a lot easier.

Once you start using iOS 26, you'll notice that the back gesture has changed. You can swipe right from pretty much anywhere on the screen to go back. This feels much more intuitive than swiping from the left edge. I tried this in a bunch of Apple's own apps, including Mail, Podcasts, and Settings, and it works quite well in all cases. One notable holdout is Safari, which retains the old back gesture. That's understandable: Safari lets you go back a page if you swipe right from the left edge, and it also lets you go forward a page by swiping towards the left from the right edge of the screen.

Back gestures on iOS 26 vs. Android

In some ways, iOS 26's back gesture is better than Android's back gesture. While Android OS lets you swipe from either edge of your phone's screen to go back—assuming gesture-based navigation is enabled on your phone—the iOS 26 back gesture is easier to remember: swipe right to go back, no matter which part of the screen you're on. This gesture has already become a part of my daily routine on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, where reaching the opposite edge of the screen is a task and a half. 

That said, I do get 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, sometimes you may encounter a conflicting gesture that may stop you from going back. For example, in Mail, you need to swipe over an empty part of the screen to go back. If you swipe over any of your emails, then you trigger Mail's default right-swipe gesture, and it shows you the option to mark a mail read or to snooze the email.

It might 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 quite excited to see how it gets polished through the beta cycle, and most importantly, how well third-party apps use the gesture to their advantage.