A recent update to Android has changed the behaviour of status bar at the
top of the screen (time, network/mobile signal strength, app notifications)
on my Samsung Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F) phone with Android 8.0.0 and Samsung
Experience 9.0, Kernel build 26 May 2021 (from Settings | About Phone |
Software Version).

The status bar used to be displayed permanently, but now apps (eg a browser
displaying a page that is too long to fit on the screen) can scroll the
status bar off the screen, and it is necessary to swipe from the top of the
screen to pull the status bar back onto the screen.

As with Windows, I like the status/task bar to be displayed all the time, so
the time, battery and network status, and any app notifications, are always
visible.

I've found references to settings in Settings | Display | Status Bar, but
there is nothing in my version of this which controls "always visible /
auto-hide". Also, Settings | Display | Easy Mode is already in Standard
Mode, although toggling between modes has no effect on the status bar.

Can anything be done to change this behaviour, or is it one of those "we
know better than you what you want" changes? :-(

On 3/16/2022 3:23 AM, NY wrote:
>
> Can anything be done to change this behaviour, or is it one of those "we
> know better than you what you want" changes? :-(

Settings > Display > Full screen apps

Turn off full screen for all apps

Regards,

-David

"David Oseas" <doseas{nospam}@usa.net> wrote in message
news:t0t0ie$pdj$1@dont-email.me...
> On 3/16/2022 3:23 AM, NY wrote:
>>
>> Can anything be done to change this behaviour, or is it one of those "we
>> know better than you what you want" changes? :-(
>
> Settings > Display > Full screen apps
>
> Turn off full screen for all apps

Damn. My phone doesn't have that option (or anything that seems to be
equivalent) in Settings > Display.

I much prefer Android over iOS, but it does suffer badly from the great
variation between one manufacturer's implementation and another's: you
either find that instructions pointed to by Google relate to a different
manufacturer's Android or else are out of date.

NY wrote:

> A recent update to Android has changed the behaviour of status bar at the top of
> the screen (time, network/mobile signal strength, app notifications) on my
> Samsung Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F) phone with Android 8.0.0 and Samsung Experience
> 9.0, Kernel build 26 May 2021 (from Settings | About Phone | Software Version).

If it's running a four year old version of android, I'm surprised it has
"recently" received any android update.

> The status bar used to be displayed permanently, but now apps (eg a browser
> displaying a page that is too long to fit on the screen) can scroll the status
> bar off the screen, and it is necessary to swipe from the top of the screen to
> pull the status bar back onto the screen.

On my pixel3 device running android 12, there are a few apps (e.g. camera) that
hide the top status bar altogether, others where the app (e.g. real calc) has a
full-screen setting that hides the status bar if I ask it to, a few apps where
the app (e.g. google maps) background extends behind the status bar icons/text,
but in most apps the background of the status bar takes its cue for a solid
colour from the foreground app.

Certainly no app shows full screen where I would prefer it didn't.

"Andy Burns" <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote in message
news:j9gds1Fcho7U1@mid.individual.net...
> NY wrote:
>
>> A recent update to Android has changed the behaviour of status bar at the
>> top of the screen (time, network/mobile signal strength, app
>> notifications) on my Samsung Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F) phone with Android
>> 8.0.0 and Samsung Experience 9.0, Kernel build 26 May 2021 (from Settings
>> | About Phone | Software Version).
>
> If it's running a four year old version of android, I'm surprised it has
> "recently" received any android update.

Well the latest reported kernel update is May 2021, so less than a year ago.

>> The status bar used to be displayed permanently, but now apps (eg a
>> browser displaying a page that is too long to fit on the screen) can
>> scroll the status bar off the screen, and it is necessary to swipe from
>> the top of the screen to pull the status bar back onto the screen.
>
> On my pixel3 device running android 12, there are a few apps (e.g. camera)
> that hide the top status bar altogether, others where the app (e.g. real
> calc) has a full-screen setting that hides the status bar if I ask it to,
> a few apps where the app (e.g. google maps) background extends behind the
> status bar icons/text, but in most apps the background of the status bar
> takes its cue for a solid colour from the foreground app.
>
> Certainly no app shows full screen where I would prefer it didn't.

Looking at the various system and own-installed apps on my phone, a lot use
the full screen, but although they change the background of the status bar
to match the app background colour, they leave the writing of the status bar
visible.

But there are a few, such as Dolphin browser and Anquet Outdoor Map
Navigator, a poor-man's Viewranger (RIP *), which obliterate the status bar
unless it is manually dragged down. Dolphin starts with the status bar
visible, both when displaying the list of bookmarks and when displaying a
web page, but as soon as you scroll the page down a bit, the status bar
disappears. OMN starts with the status bar obliterated and you always have
to pull it down if you want to see it.

It may well be that the OS hasn't changed, but recent revisions of some apps
have started using the whole area of the screen. It's a shame that Android
isn't designed like Windows, which reports one of two different screen sizes
to apps depending on whether you've configured the taskbar to be permanent
or temporary.

(*) Viewranger was an excellent app for displaying OS and Open Streetmap
maps, allowing you to prepare routes on a phone and to record tracks as you
follow those routes; it also showed you graphs of the speed, altitude and
total distance travelled, with a bar which scrolled across the graph and
moved the corresponding point around the map. It was highly acclaimed, and
used widely by walkers and the emergency services. Then it got sold to
Outdoor Active who had their own, much inferior, app. They "poisoned"
Viewranger so it stopped working at the end of February because they want
people only to use their own app. The time to kill off an old product is
when the new one is as good. And why kill the old app at all; just stop
developing it and let people carry on using the last version indefinitely.
Outdoor Active is really annoying: it displays OS maps complete with the
standard grid lines, but it rotates them so they follow true north instead
of keeping the gridlines horizontal and vertical, following grid north. That
should be a user-selectable setting. A map with sloping grid lines is just
plain WRONG!

NY wrote:

>> If it's running a four year old version of android, I'm surprised it has
>> "recently" received any android update.
>
> Well the latest reported kernel update is May 2021, so less than a year ago.

Bear in mind some Google Play {System,Services,Store} updates only take
effect after you boot. They're completely transparent otherwise.

And if you don't watch the booting process, you'll miss them unless you
expressly look for the various version in _both_ your "About" and "Apps"
system settings.

Andy Burns wrote:

> If it's running a four year old version of android, I'm surprised it has
> "recently" received any android update.

I know Andy is aware of Google's claims, but everyone else might not be.

Android is layered, like all common consumer operating systems are (except
for the primitive monolithic iOS of course).

There are some really big portions of Android which are merely layers.

Google seems to claim huge portions of Android are updated forever.
At least for Android 10 and up they update over two dozen core modules.

But recent updates claim that any Android over 4.4 can get updates too.
It's not obvious if there is any EOL date for parts of Android.

For example, in iOS, Safari stops updating, AFAIK, when the iOS does.
Yet for example, Android updates Chrome (AFAIK) essentially forever.
--
Note: Forever the way I'm using it means that they have no stated EOL.

On 3/17/2022 3:42 AM, NY wrote:

> Dolphin starts with the status bar visible, both when displaying the
> list of bookmarks and when displaying a web page, but as soon as you
> scroll the page down a bit, the status bar disappears.

Dolphin V12.2.9 doesn't do that on my Galaxy S10+. You might try turning
on the "Always show address and menu bar" switch in Dolphin settings
to see if it helps but on my phone the status bar is always there
no matter that switch (or browser scroll) position. Perhaps it's a
particular phone thing...

NY wrote:

> latest reported kernel update is May 2021, so less than a year ago.

Android sits on top of the kernel, a kernel update isn't going to affect app
appearance/behaviour, but samsung probably bundle the lot (kernel, android,
their skin) into one firmware update.

> Looking at the various system and own-installed apps on my phone, a lot use the
> full screen, but although they change the background of the status bar to match
> the app background colour, they leave the writing of the status bar visible.

sounds fairly normal

> But there are a few, such as Dolphin browser and Anquet Outdoor Map Navigator, a
> poor-man's Viewranger (RIP *), which obliterate the status bar unless it is
> manually dragged down. Dolphin starts with the status bar visible, both when
> displaying the list of bookmarks and when displaying a web page, but as soon as
> you scroll the page down a bit, the status bar disappears. OMN starts with the
> status bar obliterated and you always have to pull it down if you want to see it.

I don't use dolphin or OMN, firefox has a setting to allow the browser toolbar
to scroll off screen, but not the phone's status bar

> It may well be that the OS hasn't changed, but recent revisions of some apps
> have started using the whole area of the screen. It's a shame that Android isn't
> designed like Windows, which reports one of two different screen sizes to apps
> depending on whether you've configured the taskbar to be permanent or temporary.