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Nougat's Nav bar customizer still an option for Nexus 6P owners

Google hid the nav bar customizer months ago, but if you're the proud owner of a Nexus 6P, then you can still gain access to this lost feature.
By
August 25, 2016
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As is the case with any other piece of software, Google has decided to ditch some interesting ingredients that were previously available in early versions Android Nougat. A navigation bar is one such ingredient that got left on the cutting room floor, so you can’t taste it in the latest version of the mobile OS… well, unless you have a Nexus 6P.

The nav bar customizer gives you the tools to move and remove buttons or add new ones. You can also set the spacing for buttons and adjust icon size. There are options for the Clipboard and Keycode, although they don’t seem working in the nav bar customizer’s current form.

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The Clipboard option is supposed to let you drag and drop content in and out of a shortcut in the nav bar. The Keycode option was designed to let you bind keyboard keys to another nav bar shortcut, so you can just press a button in the nav bar to emulate predetermined keys on the keyboard.

The Clipboard and Keycode features’ apparent lack of functionality would help explain why the nav bar customizer was either cut entirely or punted to another Nougat release down the line. However, if you own a Nexus 6P and are comfortable flashing your device, you can visit this thread at XDA Developers forum to get a mod for both the nav bar customizer and the axed Night Mode.

And for those of you interested in Night Mode, you may not need a Nexus 6P to run it. There’s an app that’s has had moderate success (so far) in bringing the feature back.

So what are your thoughts on Nougat’s tabled or terminated nav bar? Do you think we might see this and other features fleshed out and unlocked in a maintenance release or the next version of Android? Sound off in the comments!

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