Google debuted Android 12L last year to improve the Android experience on big-screen devices such as tablets and foldables. It brings several new features tailored to the large screens, such as a persistent taskbar. The taskbar lets you pin your most used apps to the bottom of the screen so you can quickly switch between them. This helps with multitasking. On supported Samsung devices, the taskbar shows up to ten apps, thanks to the company’s One UI 4.1.1 customizations. But the feature itself is disabled when using third-party launchers. You can enable it forcefully by navigating to Settings > Display > Navigation bar and scrolling down to the “Looking for something else?” section. Here, you’ll find a shortcut to the taskbar’s setting from where you can enable it even when using third-party launchers. However, the publication found several glitches that explain Samsung’s decision to disable the feature. Firstly, the taskbar shows up on the multitasking menu, almost overlapping the latter’s app icons. It is also inconsistent and doesn’t appear at all sometimes. The publication also noticed other glitches that require the taskbar toggled to be turned on and off to fix. All these issues seem reasonable enough for Samsung to disable the Android 12L taskbar when using third-party launchers. As the new report notes, third-party launchers on stock Android 12L (on Pixel devices) also show the taskbar in the multitasking menu. So this appears to be an Android limitation. Hopefully, Google will fix it with subsequent releases. For the time being, if you want the best Android 12L experience on your Samsung device, avoid using third-party launchers.
Samsung is rolling out Android 12L and the taskbar to eligible Galaxy devices
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 was the first Samsung smartphone to run Android 12L out of the box. Shortly after the new foldable’s launch last month, the company started seeding the special branch of Android to its older eligible devices. The likes of the Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Tab S8, and Galaxy Tab S7 series have received the Android 12L update in recent weeks, with Samsung’s One UI 4.1.1 on top. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 should also pick up the update soon. Samsung is also rolling out One UI 4.1.1 to other older flagships such as the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S21, Galaxy Z Flip 3, Galaxy Z Flip, and more. Of course, these phones aren’t getting Android 12L but the standard Android 12. The company will upgrade all of these smartphones and tablets, and dozens of others, to Android 13 starting next month. It is currently beta testing the Android 13-based One UI 5.0 update. The stable rollout is expected to begin for the Galaxy S22 series in mid-October. We will keep you posted.
