![]() ![]() ![]() Good to know, right?! Hidden Android feature No. Just press and hold the shortcut you want and then drag it into any open space on your home screen. And when you find a shortcut that seems especially useful for the way you work, remember this extra invisible trick: You can pull any shortcut out of an app's long-press menu and put it directly on your home screen for even easier one-tap access. The list goes on from there, so take the time to tap around and explore what shortcuts your specific apps have to offer. And with Google Calendar, you can create a new event, a new task, or a new reminder right from that hidden long-press menu.With Google Drive, you can get direct links for searching, uploading a new file, or even scanning a physical document with your phone's camera.With Google Docs, you can hop straight into a new document or to the service's search function without having to first open the app and poke around.With Google's Messages app, long-pressing the app's icon lets you jump directly into a variety of recently used message threads.The options vary from one app to the next, but you're bound to find some fantastic possibilities. To look through your App Shortcut options, press and hold your finger down on any app's icon - either on your home screen or in your app drawer - for about a second. You can think of App Shortcuts as direct links to specific functions within apps on your phone - ways to get to individual actions or areas within an app without having to go through the typical process of opening it up, hunting around through its menus, and tapping multiple commands to reach your destination. These splendid little suckers are completely hidden out of sight, though, and they're consequently ignored more often than not.īut Goog almighty, can they be useful. Speaking of app-related shortcuts, Android has an exceptionally efficient system called - rather fittingly - App Shortcuts. If you're still using Android's older three-button navigation system, fear not, for you can do this, too - part of it, anyway: Just double-tap the Overview key (the square-shaped icon next to Back and Home) anytime to quickly zap between your two most recently used processes. The farther you swipe and the higher you go, the more apps you'll see - all in the order of when you last used 'em. You can also do less of a flick and more of an arching swipe - moving your finger upward, ever so slightly, as you slide toward the left or the right on the bottom of the screen - if you want to get a better look at the apps in the list before making the switch. From there, you can click flick toward the right again to go back another step in your app-using history or flick to the left to snap back in the other direction. That'll snap you back to your most recently used app faster than you can say "frugal Google bugle filled with tasty kugel" (which, to be fair, isn't something you can say especially quickly). So here's how it works: First, if you're using Android's current gesture system - with no on-screen navigation buttons and just a thin little line at the bottom of your screen - flick your finger toward the right anywhere along that bottom-of-screen area. And it's evolved a fair amount over the years, too, which makes the odds of losing track of it even greater. You can be forgiven if you forgot about it - or maybe never even knew about it in the first place - 'cause honestly, there's absolutely nothing that'd clue you into its existence. I'm talkin' about the Alt-Tab-like fast app-switching function that was first introduced way back in 2016's Android 7 and remains one of my favorite Android shortcuts to this day. One of the most useful features to come into Android in ages is also one of the least well-known and discoverable. Take a moment to rediscover these timeless treasures and remind yourself what you've been missing.
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