Discovering Your Android Shortcuts

Discover Android shortcuts

Cut down on taps by masteringyour phone’s many short

Android is designed to be easy to use, and the various screens and options are laid out in a mostly logical way. However, you will, from time-to-time, come across features you want to access that are multiple clicks away, or you’ll be scouring the menus looking for specific functions that are hidden away. In almost all cases these things can be avoided by making use of the Android UI’s wealth of shortcuts.

Many are built around the idea of the long press. This simply involves holding your finger on a button for about a second instead of tapping it, and seeing what happens. The long press is the equivalent of a right-click on a mouse in that the options you get from it are contextual, and change depending on what app you’re using and what item within that app you’re clicking on. This isn’t the only shortcut built into Android. There are many other ways to speed up how you navigate the system, as this tutorial explains.

Hit and miss
It’s worth trying the long press anywhere in the system. Even in an area of blank space, it is likely to give you options you’d otherwise have to delve into the menus to find

Menus
Tap and hold your finger on any item displayed on screen and chances are a context menu will open. This will give you a series of options related to the item

Shortcut icons
You can also add icons to your home screen that serve as shortcuts to commonly used functions. These can include bookmarks to webpages or links to contacts

Buttons
The long press also applies to buttons, whether your phone has physical or virtual buttons. Hold the Home key and you’ll see a list of your recently opened apps.

System | Use shortcuts on your phone

1: The long press
The long press involves – literally – pressing an item on the screen for longer than you normally would. You can try it on almost anything throughout the entire OS, and is a great way of getting to grips with a new app and discovering what you can do with it.

2: Email
Open up your email app and you’ll see the contents of your inbox. Now tap and hold your thumb on any one of the messages. A list of functions you can perform on that message is now displayed, such as opening it, deleting it, or marking it as unread.

3: Text
Ironically, the Gmail app is one of the few apps that has limited function within the email itself. Elsewhere, when you’re viewing text on screen you can long press on an area of text itself to open a menu for copy and paste and to change the text input method.

4: Saving images
Within the browser you can long press on an image and an option will be displayed to save that image, or long press on a link to open it in another tab.

5: Creating shortcuts
Create shortcuts for common actions. Tap in a clear area of the home screen, and from the menu that opens choose Shortcut. A list of available shortcuts will be displayed.

6: Add a bookmark
From the list choose Bookmark and the bookmarks from your browser will be listed. Tap on one and a shortcut will be placed on your home screen.

7: Add an SMS link
If you’ve got a contact you use regularly, you can add a link to the home screen. Repeat step 5, choose Direct Dial or Direct Message and choose the contact you want to add.

8: Keyboard shortcuts
If your phone has a physical keyboard there are more options. Some are similar to a desktop keyboard. Menu+C and Menu+V will perform copy and paste functions.

9: The Settings button
If you’re constantly tweaking your phone, try adding the Settings button to your home screen. Locate the Settings icon, long press on it, then drag it into place when prompted.

FAQ | Is the long press still a part of ice cream sandwich?

Yes it is. The newly revamped user interface in Android 4.0 has introduced a new series of swiping gestures aimed at giving users access to some of the features that were previously less accessible. However, the long press is still in place throughout the system, although the options appear in the menu rather than in their own window (except for third-party apps which are mostly unchanged in this regard).

FAQ | Is it possible to configure what the buttons do when you hold them down, or even to assign functions to when you double-click?

Buttons can be recon­ gured only on some rooted handsets, although not all devices are supported (and re-mapping them is not always desirable). As far as we are aware it isn’t possible to assign double-click functions to the keys.

5 Quick Tips :

1.    WIDGETS : There are no better shortcuts than widgets, which give you information without needing any interaction.

2.    APPS AND FOLDERS : Populate your home screens with apps, grouped into folders.

3.    FULL AUTOMATION : An app such as AutomateIt can do things based on the time or your location.

4.    AUTO-UPDATE APPS : Set apps to auto-update in the Market to ensure you’ve always got the latest version.

5.    SPEECH RECOGNITION : The ultimate hands-free approach. Use a speech recognition app to interact with your phone by voice.

Source : Android Tips, Tricks, Apps and Hacks Magazine