Android 15 could bring the tablet taskbar to phones: Here’s your first look at the ‘tiny’ taskbar
The new “tiny” taskbar for phones could make multitasking much easier
JoriPress
- Google is experimenting with bringing the tablet taskbar to phones running Android 15.
- Android’s taskbar is currently only shown on large-screen devices like tablets and book-style foldables.
- The “tiny” taskbar looks and behaves the same as the tablet taskbar, except it’s shrunken to fit on phone screens.
Due to the growing popularity of foldable phones and the resurgence of Android tablets, Google has been hard at work optimizing Android’s UI for large-screen devices. Their work is far from done, of course, but we’ve already gotten several exciting features from these efforts. For example, Android finally has its own taskbar, a dock that sits at the bottom of every screen so users can quickly switch between apps. The design and functionality of Android’s taskbar have changed significantly since its original inception, but one thing that hasn’t changed is its availability: it’s only available on large-screen devices. That could change in an upcoming Android 15 release, though, as Google is finally preparing to bring the taskbar to phones.
The taskbar was first introduced in 2022’s Android 12L release, a special release of Android aimed at large-screen devices. In its original version, the Android taskbar resided at the bottom of the screen, with app icons pulled from the user’s home screen dock. It was shown persistently on screen and stretched the entire width of the display, much like taskbars on desktop operating systems. With the release of Android 13, though, Google made the taskbar hideable by long-pressing on an empty space.
