One of the well-documented side-effects of Android 10's full gesture navigation is a conflict with navigation drawers. The back gesture makes it difficult to open the drawer by swiping from the left side of the display. You basically have to retrain yourself to tap the hamburger icon or use the awkward press and pause gesture. Moving the navigation elements out of the drawer makes sense with gestures, and now Google Maps is testing just that.
We've seen Google test bottom navigation bars in several apps already. The Google Maps implementation is pretty much the same thing. All of the items from the drawer have been moved to either the bottom bar or the profile menu. Google Maps currently has Explore, Commute, and For you in the bottom bar. The redesigned UI adds "Places, Post," and renamed For you to "Latest." Features such as Incognito mode, Your timeline, location sharing, etc have been moved to the menu that can be accessed by tapping your profile icon in the search bar.
The expanded bottom bar seems like a good move, especially if you use gesture navigation. I'm not sold on moving stuff to the profile menu as it's not blatantly obvious to users that they can tap their photo to see more stuff. Keep in mind that this is just in testing right now so we may never see it roll out widely. It does, however, seem that Google is moving in this direction. Do you like this new look for Google Maps and other apps?
Via: 9to5Google
Source: El Android Libre