Moto Actions, Motorola's signature gesture shortcuts (chop-chop for flashlight, twist-twist for camera, fingerprint swipe for notifications) rely on the accelerometer and gyroscope staying calibrated and the Moto app running in the background, they're one of the first things battery optimization breaks.
- 1Open the Moto app (sometimes labeled 'Moto' with the Motorola batwing icon) → Moto Actions, and confirm the specific gesture toggle is still switched on, system updates occasionally reset these.
- 2Check Settings → Apps → Moto → Battery, and set it to 'Unrestricted', aggressive battery optimization is the most common cause of gestures silently stopping.
- 3Test the motion sensors directly with our Gyroscope & Compass Test, if the sensor readings look erratic or frozen there, the gesture failure is hardware-level, not the Moto app.
- 4Recalibrate by placing the phone flat and rotating it slowly through all axes, sometimes referenced in the Moto app's sensor test under 'Moto Actions' → the gesture you're troubleshooting → 'Test'.
- 5Reinstall or update the Moto app from the Play Store, it's a separate system app from Android itself and gets its own bug fix updates.
- 6Restart the phone, a stuck sensor hub service is a known trigger after long uptime.
Tip: The fingerprint-swipe-for-notifications gesture depends on the fingerprint sensor being clean and undamaged, a scratched or dirty sensor reads swipes as taps and silently breaks the gesture, clean it with a dry microfiber cloth.