Feature Request: Option to toggle top bar position to bottom bar

[emmetm]

Problem:

In AnkiMobile, I currently can’t reach the top bar (which I will call the ‘button bar’ in this post to prevent confusion) while holding my phone in a single hand, left or right. This results in either having to shuffle my grip towards the top of my phone for single handed use or release their phone from one hand in double handed use. It’s a bit of a cumbersome movement to perform frequently (especially for single handed use).

Examples, here my thumb is fully stretched trying to hit the ‘undo’ button from it’s resting position in both hands:

I have an iPhone 16 pro. The regular iPhone 16 is slightly smaller, and the 16 max is much bigger. For me, I don’t think I could reach the button with any of the other phones from this generation of iPhone

Feature request:

Introduce a setting to move the button bar position to the bottom. I made some rough mocks:

I put the button bar below the card count/review buttons. The pros here are:

1. The button bar is now within reach from a single handed resting position.
2. The answer buttons are closer to, at least my, thumb resting position.
3. You are less likely to clip a button on the buttons bar when attempting to hit an answer button
4. The total screen real estate is the same.

Some cons are:

1. It will likely break muscle memory of answer button positions. I expect the impact here to be minimal if we make this an opt-in setting, and users who want this functionality will be happy to adapt to new positions.
2. The bottom of the screen has a lot of very dense functionality, so potentially more spacing is required to preserve aesthetic/prevent accidental button taps

Open to ideas about position, etc.

Prior art:

There’s a thread about this already for AnkiDroid:

App Bar at bottom instead of top

Not sure who else has experiencing this but with the App bar currently being at the top, it really not much of a convenience if you have to reach buttons often. Any attempts in bringing the bar down (closer to the reach of the thumb/finger) in future versions would be very helpful I believe.

There’s some good examples listed there for other apps doing this. More examples I can think of are Safari and Chrome moving the search bar to the bottom by default.

iOS 18 now also enables free placement of icons on the homescreen, which also tackles this problem. People have been complaining about this exact issue (example).

[Danika_Dakika]

Interesting idea.

Potential stopgap alternatives for you – if Undo is your primary concern, you could make it easier to reach by:

• Pinning it to your “Frequent Actions” in Study Tools (although that would be 2 clicks). Study Tools - AnkiMobile Manual
• Add it to a Tap or Swipe action elsewhere on the screen. Preferences - AnkiMobile Manual

[emmetm]

I knew about the tap sections but I didn’t know there were also swipe actions.

Adding a swipe action definitely will solve this for me (for just undo). I do think being able to move the bar would be useful in general however (especially for accessibility)