Add 3 finger long press gesture on Android to bring up dev menu

[ccheever]

The response was really positive when we did this on iOS.

Is there a reason not to add this on Android?
In general, I think we should try to make the clients consistent across both platforms.

Also, what if we made double three finger tap be reload? Looking at my own behavior, reload is the most common action that I do from the dev menu, by a large margin

[brentvatne]

I think it's not really needed on Android - you can tap and hold the multi tasking button to open it up, and I think that's better because it's a physical-ish button with dedicate space on the screen.

[tsapeta]

@ccheever - I agree, I've been planning to do the same on Android but decided not to do this in this iteration for following reasons:

• as Brent said, there are already a few other options on Android to bring up dev menu (tap and hold multi tasking button or send keyevent through adb).
• due to the point above, I had more important things to do at that time.
• iOS users was the only group affected by two finger gesture removal, so I wanted to deliver the new gesture very quickly for them (kind of a post-release fix).

I'm not against adding it to Android as well, just for consistency. A gesture for reloading also sounds good 👍

[ccheever]

This all makes sense. I didn't even know about the long press the task switcher shortcut!
I do think there is a lot of value in consistency across platforms for stuff like this.
I think we should try to give people as much as possible the same experience across every platform.

[tsapeta]

Yeah, I think the same about consistency! My heart hurts when I have to do platform check 😂
I also think we should handle some keyboard shortcuts directly in the dev server, just as the new react-native cli does where pressing d brings up the dev menu (afaik we do this only for web). And not only because it would be easier to migrate habits from rn-cli to expo-cli but also to give users the freedom to choose the way they feel the most comfortable with.

[tubatoothpaste]

Super noob question here, but could you point me to which button this is? Is it the one with the three vertical lines? When I press and hold, it zooms out to all of my open apps instead of bringing up the expo menu where I can reload.

I just got my first android phone today to develop with. Been an iPhone user all this time.

EDIT: Just realized swiping down from the top of the screen allows me to refresh.

[ccheever]

@tubatoothpaste The buttons are different on different Android devices. The one being discussed in this thread is most often a square these days on the lower right of the screen.

You can see what I mean here:

[tubatoothpaste]

Thanks for the clarification! I've got a Samsung Galaxy A10e which doesn't have that button, but swiping down from the top of the screen reveals a refresh button that is just as convenient as the three finger press.

[amirhs712]

I didn't know about holding the multi-task button on android!
I think https://docs.expo.io/workflow/debugging/#developer-menu should be updated.

[brentvatne]

@amirhs712 - can you open a pull request?

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