Google Play Games is giving Sidekick a much-needed activation upgrade

Google finally gave Play Games a big upgrade last year, including an in-game overlay called Sidekick. This overlay lets you instantly view achievements, get input on the game with Gemini Live, take screenshots/screen recordings, and more. Activating Sidekick in supported games currently requires users to drag the handle that appears on the right or left of the screen. The Play Store is now adding a new activation method for this gamer-centric feature, and might have another in the works.

While the existing Sidekick drag handle works as intended, its placement isn’t ideal for certain games, especially FPS or some arcade titles. The Play Store is adding a new “Configure Sidekick access” option in Settings > General > Google Play Games, which includes an “Open only from notifications” option, alongside the existing “Open only within games.”

Choosing this new option removes the onscreen drag handle and lets you activate Sidekick via the notifications panel, enabling a distraction-free gaming experience. We’re seeing this across multiple Play Store versions, which indicates it could be part of a server-side rollout. But that’s not all.

Digging into version 53.1.23 of the Play Store, we can give you an early look at another way to trigger the on-screen drag handle that could greatly reduce accidental Sidekick activations.

As the screenshots above show, a future update could let you configure a double-tap system for this handle, wherein tapping the handle once displays a “Double-tap to open” onscreen prompt. The handle itself gets a revised circle icon to distinguish it from the standard drag handle.

This would let gamers keep the onscreen drag handle experience without worrying about accidentally activating it. Since this is under development, it’s still difficult to say when (or if) it might be incorporated into Play Games, but we’d be happy to see it arrive.

Thanks to @catat2am on Telegram!