Rework side toolbar

I use gesture navigation which means swiping from the sides of the screen triggers a go back command in native Android. Trying to access the side toolbar for example on images or comments is really difficult annoying and unnecessary for me because of the swipe command.

I suggest either implement an icon that opens this toolbar - this is only a workaround and this could be triggered by a settings toggle that would disable opening the side toolbar with swiping and instead adds said icon - or scrap the tap to close feature in the image viewer and instead use it as a way to open this panel. This would be difficult in the comments section.

At this point I would redesign the whole UI with some icons placed at the bottom perhaps, a back arrow at the top left, a properties icon and a drop down "3 dot" icon on the top right etc. And this only visible when tapping. (Somehow like Infinity does it). I'm not bashing on the implementation, I know development is really hard but the interface is not that comfortable and user friendly to use.

I suggest stripping down the functions of this toolbar. We don't necessarily need all of the features on a revamped UI, like upvote, reply or similar things since we don't need to directly do these from image viewer in this case. A user can just go back, enter the comment UI then do it from there. My point is we don't need to have multiple options and places to trigger actions from.

I see that users can chose what icons to show in this bar, this suggests that the devs want to give full control of this to the users. So if making a custom layout for this screen is out of the option, even with the ability to still hide certain icons, perhaps just do some kind of hidden toolbar at the bottom with these icons. The emphasis is on the replacement of the swiping from the side. An option for turning off this toolbar completely may be a solution too.