Earlier this year, it was discovered that Google is working on a new tap gesture for Pixel phones in the Android 11 beta. More recently, Apple rolled out the same feature to iPhones participating in the iOS 14 beta. These gestures allow you to assign tasks to a double or triple tap on the back of the device — things like toggling the flashlight, bringing down the notifications shade, taking a screenshot, and opening Google Assistant, to name but a few. Now new evidence suggests that Xiaomi is working on a very similar feature for MIUI 12.
XDA tipster kacskrz spotted the code for this feature in the latest beta build of MIUI 12 and was able to surface the settings menu for these gestures, although they don’t work as of yet. For now, the actions appear limited to only five options but keep in mind that this is far from finished: this was not only found in a beta for MIUI, but it’s also hidden away from users and is non-functional. By the time this reaches end users,hopefully we’ll see more actions from which to choose.
As of yet, there’s no way to know when Xiaomi will make this available, but hopefully, it’s soon. I know I’d love to have something like this on my S20 to pull down my notification shade, filling in the hole left by the absence of a rear fingerprint reader. With companies like Google, Apple, and Xiaomi working on this, perhaps more phone-makers will soon be following.
