Create a slide-in menu with the navigation drawer component

The navigation drawer component is a slide-in menu that lets users navigate to various sections of your app. Users can activate it by swiping from the side or tapping a menu icon.

Consider these three use cases for implementing a navigation drawer:

  • Content organization: Enable users to switch between different categories, such as in news or blogging apps.
  • Account management: Provide quick links to account settings and profile sections in apps with user accounts.
  • Feature discovery: Organize multiple features and settings in a single menu to facilitate user discovery and access in complex apps.

In Material Design, there are two types of navigation drawers:

  • Standard: Share space within a screen with other content.
  • Modal: Appears over the top of other content within a screen.

Version compatibility

This implementation requires that your project minSDK be set to API level 21 or higher.

Dependencies

Implement a navigation drawer

You can use the ModalNavigationDrawer composable to implement a navigation drawer:

Key points

  • Use the drawerContent slot to provide a ModalDrawerSheet and provide the drawer's contents.

  • ModalNavigationDrawer accepts a number of additional drawer parameters. For example, you can toggle whether or not the drawer responds to drags with the gesturesEnabled parameter as in the following example:

Control navigation drawer behavior

To control how the drawer opens and closes, use DrawerState:

Key points

  • Pass a DrawerState to ModalNavigationDrawer using the drawerState parameter.
  • DrawerState provides access to the open and close functions, as well as properties related to the current drawer state. These suspending functions require a CoroutineScope, which you can instantiate using rememberCoroutineScope. You can also call the suspending functions in response to UI events.

Results

Figure 1. A standard navigation drawer (left) and a modal navigation drawer (right).

Collections that contain this guide

This guide is part of these curated Quick Guide collections that cover broader Android development goals:

Learn how composable functions can enable you to easily create beautiful UI components based on the Material Design design system.
Quick guide collection

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