One of the things that first struck me about MX Player, when I tried it out many years ago, was its swiping gestures on each side of the screen. Instead of looking for physical volume buttons or pausing the video to find the brightness controls on my phone, a simple swipe would adjust those without skipping a second. These same gestures are now available in Android's built-in video player.

Files by Google, which started out in 2017 as Files Go and graduated to become the default file manager in Android 11, has been adding many new features in the past few months. After safe folder, PDF support, and video playback speed, its included video player now supports swiping gestures on each side of the screen. The right side controls volume, the left brightness. These work well whether you're watching in portrait or landscape.

The change is live for us in v1.0.332273520 (APK Mirror) of Files by Google, which rolled out toward the end of September. But since there was no visual hint that this feature was added, we missed it until our tipster pointed it out.

UPDATE: 2020/12/14 11:50am PST BY RITA EL KHOURY

Double-tap to seek

Files just added one more gesture to its arsenal. You can now double tap on the left or right side of the screen while playing videos to skip 10s backward or forward, respectively. This feature is now live in v1.0.346212449 (APK Mirror), but it may have shown up earlier for some users.

Files by Google Developer: Google LLC
Price: Free
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Thanks: Lucas Fraga