Android Q Beta 2: You can now choose notification dismiss swipe direction

If you’re like me, and typically swipe your notifications from left-to-right, you were likely very frustrated with last month’s Android Q Beta 1 and its new menu for each notification. Previously, Android notifications could be swiped in either direction to dismiss, but in Android Q Beta 1, swiping left-to-right opened the new notification menu. With today’s Android Q Beta 2, you can now choose which direction of swipe opens the notification menu versus dismissing.

With beta software, there are always kinks to work around and things that just aren’t quite right. We accept that risk when we install it. But sometimes, a new feature comes at the cost of regular usage.

That was the case with the new method of accessing the notification menu in Android Q Beta 1. If you normally swipe left-to-right, this change to the menu likely destroyed years of notification swiping muscle memory. Thankfully, in Android Q Beta 2, you can change which direction of swipe, though the option to do so is a bit buried within settings.

Here’s the full rundown of how to switch the notification dismissal swipe direction on Android Q Beta 2:

Open the Settings app, then select Apps & notifications. From here, tap Notifications.

On this page, tap to open the Advanced menu, then choose Swipe actions.

This opens a simple toggle that lets you choose which notification swipe direction is the menu and which is the dismiss. Unfortunately, for those who still want both swipe directions to dismiss notifications, Android Q Beta 2 does not include a way to keep the Android P behavior, and we don’t know if future releases will change this.

In the meantime though, this will at least get me back to swiping in the right direction.