Immersive content

You can use immersive mode to hide the system bars for a full-screen experience. This is useful for enabling users to enjoy a fully immersive experience for video, games, images, and books, and to avoid accidental exits during a game.

Takeaways

  • Provide an intuitive way for users to display UI–for example, tapping on the screen during video playback displays video playback controls and system bars.

  • Never permanently hide system bars on personal devices. You cannot permanently hide system bars in your app unless for an Android Enterprise deployment, so your designs should account for them to provide the optimal experience. Read more about designing for system bars.

  • Provide an overlay or scrim for overlaying text and controls.

  • Combine immersive mode with other features, such as picture-in-picture (PiP) and Chromecast, to continue the experience.

  • Immersive mode causes users to lose easy access to system navigation, so use it only when the benefit to the user experience goes beyond simply using extra screen space.

  • Fullscreen experiences aren't appropriate for all content. Consider when to help a user avoid accidental exits from frequent taps, like a game, or have an uninterrupted view to enjoy videos or books.

Be mindful of how often users jump in and out of apps to check notifications, to conduct impromptu searches, or to take other actions. Immersive mode causes users to lose easy access to system navigation, so use it only when the benefit to the user experience goes beyond simply using extra screen space.

Fullscreen experiences aren't appropriate for all content. Consider when to help a user avoid accidental exits from frequent taps, like a game, or have an uninterrupted view to enjoy videos or books.

To implement immersive mode, you can use WindowInsetsControllerCompat to hide both the status bar and the navigation bar–or just one of them. For details, refer to the Hide system bars developer guide.

The following sections describe examples of immersive mode use cases.

Video 1: Video playback - tapping to reveal relevant video player UI


Figure 1: Hidden status and navigation bars can help the reader fully engage with books


Figure 2: Take advantage of immersive mode in game apps to prevent accidental system UI taps


Figure 3: Full-screen imagery increases the immersion of a video call


Figure 4: Presentation in full screen allows for audience immersion


Figure 5: Wayfinding directory kiosk on a non-personal device (DPC or enterprise deployment app)

Android has several features that work well to enhance your user's content experience. For more check out: