Oreo/Pixel2: Bottom Navigation Bar is no longer fading out

Question

As long as I had my Pixel 2, the bottom navigation bar would not be displayed as long as an app was open. To get to the bar, you have to swipe it up from the bottom.

Works fine for me, I like the additional space.

Since yesterday the bar is no longer hiding and stays visible. And I've no idea what I changed. I believe I hit some combination of volume buttons, power button and nav bottons ... makes no sense though.

The navigation bar is still hiding for games and videos, and can be retrieved by swiping up (or to left/right in landscape mode) but i.e. stays visible in Chrome, Play Store, the settings and other apps (including some which were not created by Google).

I found a bunch of threads/posts where people are asking how to get this feature (to hide the bottom navigation), and they were referred to rooting their phone and some ad-featured apps in the Play Store.

Thats not what I am after. The feature already worked, but I can't find any setting to enable it again.

Anyone have an idea how to enable this feature again?

Answer 1

Credit to PM_ME_2LEARNHOW2CODE from r/GooglePixel:

To autohide statusbar only, use command:

adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.status=*

To autohide navbar only, use command:

adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=*

To autohide both nav and status bar, use command:

adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=*

To revert back to stock, just re-enter the command you did but without the *

adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=

If your phone doesn't let you unlock it/freezes up when you try to unlock and you want full immersive mode run these:

adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=*
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=apps,-com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox

I personally used a tweak to permanently hide my navbar and then use immersive for my status bar.