How to Handle Predictive Back Gesture in Compose
Android maintains a stack of destinations as users navigate through your app, enabling smooth transitions and allowing users to return to previous screens by pressing the Back button. While this default behavior is sufficient in most cases, there are scenarios that require custom handling to ensure the best user experience.
In earlier versions, we commonly used the onBackPressed() function to manage back button behavior. However, this method has since been deprecated. In its place, the Android team introduced a more robust and flexible approach to handling back presses.
You can learn more about this change both in my blog post and the official Android documentation.
Additionally, with the introduction of Android 13, the Android team rolled out Predictive back navigation, which enhances the back gesture experience — especially when custom back navigation is in use. According to the official documentation:
Note: Android 13 introduces predictive back navigation, which works alongside custom back navigation on Android devices. We strongly recommend implementing predictive back navigation as soon as possible. Failing to do so may lead to unexpected behavior in future Android releases.To learn more, see Add support for the predictive back gesture.
As I also mentioned in my blog post, starting with Android 13, the system provides a predictive back gesture that visually indicates to users when they’re about to exit the app and return to the launcher. This gives users a clearer sense of what will happen next and helps prevent accidental exits. To support this behavior, your app should explicitly inform the system whether it handles the back gesture or not.
Furthermore, in Android 13 and 14, the back-to-home animation becomes available when the Predictive back animations developer option is enabled. However, starting with Android 15, this developer option has been removed. Instead, system animations — such as back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity — are automatically shown for apps that have opted into the predictive back gesture.
Now is a great time to enable predictive back navigation in your applications to ensure a smoother and more consistent user experience across Android versions. In this blog post, we’ll focus specifically on how to implement it using Jetpack Compose. If you’re interested in exploring the feature in more depth or across different frameworks, you can find more detailed information here.
Setup your application
To get started with predictive back navigation, you’ll first need to enable it in your app’s manifest. This can be done at the application level with the following configuration:
<manifest ...>
<application
...
android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback="true">
...
</application>
</manifest>If you prefer more granular control, you can enable or disable the back gesture on a per-activity basis like this:
<manifest ...>
<application . . .
android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback="false">
<activity
android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback="true"
...
</activity>
<activity
android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback="false"
...
</activity>
</application>
</manifest>For additional requirements or considerations your application may need to meet, take a look here.
Once you’ve enabled the back invoke callback in the manifest, your app should now show the predictive back gesture in action. This also enables system animations that help users understand where the back gesture will take them:
- Back-to-home: Animates the transition when returning to the home screen.
- Cross-activity: Shows smooth transitions between different activities within your app.
- Cross-task: Displays animations when moving between separate tasks.
Predictive back with Compose Navigation
With Navigation Compose version 2.8.0 and above, the library automatically applies a cross-fade animation between screens when the user swipes back using the predictive back gesture.
You can further customize navigation animations in Navigation Compose by overriding the popExitTransition and popEnterTransition parameters of the NavHost composable. This gives you full control over the animation behavior when the user navigates back.
val navController = rememberNavController()
NavHost(
navController = navController,
startDestination = "...",
modifier = Modifier,
popExitTransition = { ... },
popEnterTransition = { ... }
) {
// Your composable destinations here
}This allows you to tailor the transition animations to better match your app’s design and user experience.
Predictive back for Shared element transitions in Compose
When you enable predictive back navigation, shared element transitions are also adjusted to smoothly support back navigation, enhancing the visual continuity between screens.
You can learn more about Shared Element Transitions in Compose from here
Handling Predictive back Manually
I previously discussed handling back presses manually in Compose in one of my blog post. Building on that concept, there’s now a composable called PredictiveBackHandler. Similar in structure, it also provides a Flow<BackEventCompat>, which reflects the progress of the current back gesture in real time—allowing you to respond more dynamically as the gesture unfolds.
PredictiveBackHandler { progress: Flow<BackEventCompat> ->
// code for gesture back started
try {
progress.collect { backevent ->
// code for progress
}
// code for completion
} catch (e: CancellationException) {
// code for cancellation
}
}The tricky part here is handling cancellation properly. Since the lambda parameter in PredictiveBackHandler is a suspend function, it runs in a coroutine scope that can be cancelled for various reasons. To avoid crashes or unexpected behavior, it’s important to wrap your logic in a try-catch block and handle CancellationException appropriately. In my experience, I encountered this exception while testing the code on an emulator device.
With access to the back gesture’s progress, you can animate your UI elements freely during the gesture. For example, you might animate a view’s size based on the gesture’s progress to create a more dynamic and responsive transition.
var progress by remember { mutableFloatStateOf(1f) }
PredictiveBackHandler { backEvent: Flow<BackEventCompat> ->
try {
backEvent.collect { event ->
progress = 1f - event.progress
...
}
} catch (e: CancellationException) {
progress = 1f
} finally {
progress = 1f
}
}
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Conclusion
Predictive back navigation brings smoother and more intuitive transitions to Android apps, improving the overall user experience. With tools like PredictiveBackHandler and animation support based on gesture progress, you can create rich, responsive navigation behaviors in Jetpack Compose. As Android continues to evolve, now is a great time to adopt these new APIs and make your app feel more modern and polished.
