Many app shortcuts nowadays allow you to use one-handed mode. Android will let the user access an exceptionally efficient organisation system called App Shortcuts. But they are hidden, so most people don't pay much attention to them.
But they are easily top among the features you should use on your Android phone. You can think of them as direct links to specific functions by apps on your Android phone — ways to get to individual 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.
For example, mobile devices have now been seamlessly integrated into the gaming experience, offering convenience and accessibility unmatched by traditional gaming setups. As gamers immerse themselves in their favourite titles, they concurrently utilise their mobile devices to explore the latest reviews and recommendations, ensuring informed decisions on where to invest their time and resources.
This symbiotic relationship between mobile gaming and review research underscores the pivotal role of mobile technology in shaping the modern gaming landscape, empowering players to curate their gaming experiences with precision and ease. And this is just one case, but the new features extend far beyond that.
Exploring the Power of App Shortcuts on Android
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. The options vary from one app to the next, but you'll find some fantastic possibilities. For instance:
- With Google's Messages app, long-pressing the app's icon lets you jump directly into various recently used message threads.
- With Google Docs, you can hop straight into a new document or to the service's search function without having first to open the app and poke around.
- With Google Drive, you can get direct links for searching, uploading a new file, or even scanning a physical document with your mobile camera.
- With Google Calendar, you can create a new event, a new task, or a new reminder right from that hidden long-press menu.
The list goes on from there, so take the time to tap around and explore what shortcuts your specific apps have to offer. And when you find one 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. Just drag and hold the shortcut you want and then drag it into any open space on your home screen.
Live Caption is one of the cooler hidden Android features and uses text to aid the hard-of-hearing
Google's Android 10 release introduced an unexpected gem into the operating system. It is another one of the cool hidden Android features that has the potential to be way more useful than you'd expect at first glance. It's called Live Caption, and it's technically a nice game changer for people who are hard of hearing.
The benefit in that scenario is obvious, but Live Caption can also come in handy for practically anyone on a day-to-day basis — because what it effectively does is allow you to see what a video or podcast is saying without having any audible sound playing from your phone. I'll often flip it on briefly when I want to "listen in" to some manner of multimedia. At the same time, I don't have headphones handy and am in a situation where blaring sound out from my device's speakers wouldn't exactly be optimal (a novel thought for someone to have these days, I realise).
In such moments, all I've gotta do is tap a little box that looks like a notification shows up beneath the volume controls whenever any kind of media is playing on my device. Once that button's pressed, every word uttered in the video or audio clip shows up on my screen so I can read it whilst having the actual sound turned all the way down.
Maximising Accessibility with Android's Live Caption Feature
Let's take this hidden-feature concept a step further 'cause there are actually two more easy-to-miss possibilities within this system. Once you've activated Live Caption and see captions on your screen, you can double-tap the caption box to make it bigger — or press and hold your finger onto the box to move it around anywhere on your screen. Whee!
If you're using a phone with Android 10 or higher and don't see that Live Caption option as part of your volume controls, head into your system settings and search for Live Caption there. Find the associated section and flip a toggle into the on position within it to activate the feature — and, depending on your device, you may need to activate a second toggle in that same area to make sure the Live Caption option actually shows up as part of your volume panel.
On Samsung phones, you have the ability to expand your volume panel (by tapping the little three-horizontal-box icon within it) to find the Live Caption option.
No matter what type of phone you're using, though, remember: Live Caption will only show up and work when some manner of sound is actively being played.
Check-in Quick Settings for the Share menu
This particular setting was first added to Android way back in the 2016 Nougat era but then taken away for a while and only brought back with 2021's Android 11 launch. It can customise the order of apps in your device's system-level Share menu — which means you can then keep your own most frequently used sharing destinations at the top of the list to make sharing stuff more convenient
The feature is unfortunately complicated by the fact that lots of apps, including many of Google's own utilities, now use custom share interfaces instead of relying on the system standard (grumble, grumble, grumble).
But for any app that's actually sensibly doing things and using the standard Android share menu, take note: So long as your phone is running Android 11 or higher, you can press and hold your favourite finger onto any item within that sharing list to stick it to the top. And it'll then stay in that spot for all future sharing anytime the standard system menu is used.
For example, you can test it out by highlighting some text within your email and selecting "Share" from the menu that comes up. Then press and hold your cursor down on any of the apps you see in the list of sharing options. That's when You'll see the command to pin it. You can pin up to four different sharing targets if you want, and they'll all appear alphabetically in a special row at the top of that menu.
App pin allows you to stick apps to your home screen
This particular hidden feature was introduced all the way back in 2014's Android 5 release It allows you to hold a particular app or process to your screen and then requires you to unlock your device before anything else can be accessed.
The idea is actually quite sensible: For example, if you want to give someone else your phone to someone else temporarily and you don't want them to swipe left through your phone, just pin whatever app is relevant to that purpose to your screen, and you can rest easy knowing the rest of your personal information will remain secure and inaccessible until you get your device back.
- To use the feature, first open settings for app pinning — or, if you're using certain Android phones like a Samsung mobile, search instead for the pin app.
- However you get there, once you're on the right settings screen, make sure the main toggle for the feature is activated and also make sure the toggle next to "Ask for unlock pattern before unpinning" (or "Use screen lock type to unpin," with Samsung ) is also in the on position.
- Then, just open up any app you want and head into the Overview interface (by swiping up from the bottom of your screen with the current Android gesture setup or by tapping the square-shaped button at the bottom of the screen with the old legacy three-button nav approach). Tap the icon at the top of the card for your current app, and you are set
- Tap that bad boy, and tap it good. That app will then be locked in place, and to get to anything else. First, have to swipe your finger up from the bottom of the screen and hold it in place for a few seconds — and then provide whatever manner of unlocking authentication (PIN, pattern, password, appendage, 14 drops of blood from your pinky toe, etc) is appropriate to continue.
If you're still using the common three-button navigation, you'll instead press the square-shaped Overview button to get to the Overview interface. Press and hold the Back and Overview buttons together when you're ready to unpin.
Split screen is top of the Features you should be using
There is an area of your phone's operating system that holds a helpful feature that I suspect 99% of Android phone users don't even know about, and that is the long-standing split-screen mode. Most of us don't know that our phones allow us to view two apps on our screen simultaneously. Depending on your device and specific Android version, it could be labelled as "Split top," "Open in split screen view," or "Splitsy ditsy" (though that last one exists mainly in my own demented man-brain).
Tap the icon at the top of Overview for any app, find and tap that screen-splitting command, then decide which second app you want to share your screen — and last but not least, bask in the glory of your newfound superpowers.
Guest Mode is a smart lock that keeps intruders out
Back to the app pinning possibility from a second ago: If you really want to keep your device protected from meddling while it's in someone else's hands and/or claws, take a minute to reacquaint yourself with this feature.
It is basically like an incognito environment for your entire phone: You just flip a switch, and your phone shifts itself into a blank-slate state — where your own personal apps, accounts, and data are all securely tucked away, and you get an out-of-the-box-like experience, with only the basic preinstalled system apps available.
No one can get to any of your stuff without first signing back in as you (and putting in your preferred method of authentication), and nothing is done in that environment ever impacts your standard smartphone setup. It's a pretty powerful form of privacy protection, but for everyone else, follow these three quick steps:
- Open up the System section of your phone's settings.
- Tap "Multiple users" — or if you don't see that as an option, first tap "Advanced" and then look for it. (If your system settings menu structure is just completely different, try searching for it within the settings area.)
- On the screen that comes up, make sure the toggle at the top is set in the on position.
Disable the mode with ease when you need to
And then, whenever you want to tap into your Guest Mode option, swipe down twice from the top of your screen to open your Quick Settings, tap your profile picture (which is probably just a generic person icon in the lower-right corner of the panel), and then tap the "Add guest" option on the screen that comes up.
When you're ready to exit the settings and get back to default, just press and open Settings again, tap that user profile picture again and select "Remove guest" from the menu that comes up. That'll erase and reset everything that was done in that temporary profile and take you back to your own standard environment (once you've put in your PIN, pattern, or passcode or used your preferred appendage to prove that you're actually you).
keep in mind that all these hidden features are for Android phones alone, in another article, i will discuss hidden features peculiar to the iPhone
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