Starting with Android 13, the only way to see the taskbar on a book-style foldable is to swipe up from the navigation handle to the top of the screen. But that is changing with Android 15 and with the upcoming build of Android, Google is adding a button to quickly bring back a larger taskbar on the bottom of the screen. Google is working to optimize the taskbar so that it can show up on a smartphone without making everything else on the phone look smaller.
You can have a taskbar show up now on a phone running the Android 15 Beta, but it comes at a cost. | Image credit-PhoneArena
In Android 15 Beta 4, Rahman discovered a taskbar feature that will give users the option to have a taskbar appear at the bottom of the screen at all times without changing the scaling of the display. Hopefully, this smaller smartphone taskbar will be ready to go by the time Android 15 is released although it still isn’t ready for prime time.
If you want a taskbar right now on your Android phone running the Android 15 Beta, it can be done but you’ll have to make a change to the display making everything too small to view. Go to Settings > About phone. Tap on the word “Build number” at the bottom of the screen six times to enable developer options. After you’ve done this, go back to Settings > System > Developer options. Under the Drawing heading (it comes after the Input heading) tap on Smallest width and change it from 411 dp to 600. You’ll see the taskbar at the bottom of the phone.
Most likely you’ll want to switch back to 411 dp because it will be too hard to read the screen. If you do decide that a taskbar isn’t worth squinting hard at your phone, waiting for the smartphone version of the taskbar to be available, hopefully in Android 15, is probably your best bet.
