Nexus 6P gets double tap to wake functionality thanks to custom kernels

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Published 20 Nov 2015

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Nexus 6P

Double tap to wake is one feature that is slowly becoming a commonplace in high end Android devices. Except for Samsung, almost every other OEM have shipped their phone with double tap to wake functionality this year. Considering the ever increasing screen size of today’s smartphones, double tap to wake is a must-have feature in my opinion.

For some reason, the Huawei-made Nexus 6P does not come with this feature built-in. Just like with the Nexus 6, Google had planned to implement double tap to wake on the Nexus 6P, but decided against enabling it at the last moment. It is likely that Google thinks Ambient Screen and the Nexus Imprint sensor are a perfectly suitable replacement for double tap to wake, which while true, cannot downplay how useful having double tap to wake feature is.

Thankfully, Google has only disabled the feature at a kernel level and not at the hardware level, so with a bit of tinkering, you can easily enable double tap to wake feature on the device. The process requires you to flash any one of the custom kernels available for the Nexus 6P over at XDA forums, which in turn first requires you to unlock the bootloader of the device and flash a custom recovery.

With a fingerprint scanner at its rear, having double tap to wake feature on the Nexus 6P might not be that useful for most people. But if you are among the small group of people that miss the feature on your 6P, you now at least have the option of enabling the feature through some hackery.