Ionic manages a history while you're navigating from one view to the other.
$ionicHistory keeps track of views as the user navigates through an
app. Similar to the way a browser behaves, an Ionic app is able to
keep track of the previous view, the current view, and the forward
view (if there is one). However, a typical web browser only keeps
track of one history stack in a linear fashion.
Unlike a traditional browser environment, apps and webapps have
parallel independent histories, such as with tabs. Should a user
navigate few pages deep on one tab, and then switch to a new tab and
back, the back button relates not to the previous tab, but to the
previous pages visited within that tab.
There's a bug open on github which hasn't been fixed yet (and will only be fixed in 2.0) where Adam Bradley states:
The back button does not display because when you go into a tab, it
enter's it own "history", meaning each tab has its own navigation back
and forward.
So, basically, when you move from tabs to regular view you're going to lose the back button.
What you can do is to create one yourself:
<ion-nav-buttons side="left">
<button class="button back-button buttons button-clear header-item" ng-click="goBack()">
<i class="icon ion-ios-arrow-back"> Back</i>
</button>
</ion-nav-buttons>
and place it inside your view:
<ion-view view-title="home">
<ion-nav-buttons side="left">
<button class="button back-button buttons button-clear header-item" ng-click="goBack()">
<i class="icon ion-ios-arrow-back"> Back</i>
</button>
</ion-nav-buttons>
<ion-content padding='true' scroll='false' has-footer='false'>
<div class="card">
<div class="item item-text-wrap">
HOME PAGE
</div>
</div>
</ion-content>
</ion-view>
As you can see I've used ng-click="goBack()" for the button.
In your controller you simply would:
$scope.goBack = function(){
$ionicHistory.goBack();
}
don't forget to inject $ionicHistory in your controller.
PS: This is a over-simplified solution as it does not check if the history has got a backview:
$ionicHistory.viewHistory().backView
