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I'm looking for a task switcher that shows all running apps (and not like the default android one which only shows the 6 most recent). The ones I've come across seem to require a long press of the search button to activate, but the SGS lacks a dedicated search button.
Does anyone know of one that uses another shortcut, long press home / double tap home for example?
This is exactly what I'm looking for, but I've been searching through in market place for something that let's me assign program to hardware key action. No luck so far. Any experienced folks know if it's possible to customize the phone this way?
I have used taskswitcher and prehome..both function pretty much the same way...tap home button once shows all running apps and hitting it once more from the app switch screen takes you to the home screen. I kinda prefer prehome as it seems to use less memory but then again theres really not much of a difference imo..hope this helped..
audit8321 said:
I have used taskswitcher and prehome..both function pretty much the same way...tap home button once shows all running apps and hitting it once more from the app switch screen takes you to the home screen. I kinda prefer prehome as it seems to use less memory but then again theres really not much of a difference imo..hope this helped..
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Great recommendation. Will try it out. Thank you very much for sharing is.
Lovely. Pressing home will show the truly still running task instead of recently used ones. It's lets you kill or switch to any active program.
So, long press home to show last 6 most recently used programs
single press home will invoke the task manager, allowing killing and switching.
Double press home to really go to home.
Sounds like what I want. Seems a little buggy, but I'm happy with it at least for now.
As far as physical goes...Android has too many buttons. IMO you only need:
Button 1
Press Once = Sleep
Press Twice = Wake
Long Press = Shutdown/Turn On
Button 2
Press Once = Desktop
Press Twice = AppDrawer
Long Press = Open/Close Dockbar (scrollable dock for heavily used apps such as phone, messaging, music, etc that doesnt take up screen space.)
Button 3
Volume up/down
and possibly a dedicated CAPACITIVE scrolling/zooming button for fast scanning thru the app drawer and/or desktops and/or scrolling/zooming in web browsers.
(this way u can have larger widgets on ur desktops because u have a dedicated app drawer button and not one that takes up space on ur desktop. plus ur not limited to just 7 desktops like u get with HTC preview screens or launcherpro, etc because it would be easy to scroll thru 20 desktops with the dedicated capacitive scroll)
Ok. So if u put the sleep/wake on top of the phone, volume button on the left side, your left with just one button like the iphone and maybe my proposed idea of the capacitive scrolling button (thats if u like that idea).
this would be different from the iphone even though the iphone has one button because its functions are different. the iphone button does BACK+LONG PRESS=HOME. this would do a DESKTOP/APPDRAWER+LONG PRESS= DOCKBAR.
so it has 3 functions instead of 2. add in the capacitive scrolling and u have a simple easy to use device without redundant buttons thats still different from
apples iphone.
-no need for back button. browsers and apps can provide soft buttons in its user interface.
-no need for search button. widgets and apps can be used for this on ur desktop
-no need for settings button. again, widgets and apps can be used on ur desktops. put ur desktops to use!
great if u understood what i said. sorry for the rant if u didnt. just an idea and my 2cents.
.
Get an iphone if you want less buttons.
I personally love the back, home and menu buttons, and find them very very useful.
Errr... my three most frequent used buttons are: back, home and menu and you want to remove 2 of them. Yeah, great idea ;-)
Brut.all said:
Errr... my three most frequent used buttons are: back, home and menu and you want to remove 2 of them. Yeah, great idea ;-)
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Click to collapse
I agree, the last iphone I used pissed me off hard not having a physical back button....
I agree. back and home are essential! relying too much on soft buttons is silly. Also if you really dont like the OS because of the number of hard buttons then I think you are a little confused.
The hard buttons are usually decided by the manufacturer arent they? maybe your rant should be directed at htc and not android? I could be wrong.
mini_robot said:
As far as physical goes...Android has too many buttons. IMO you only need:
Button 1
Press Once = Sleep
Press Twice = Wake
Long Press = Shutdown/Turn On
Button 2
Press Once = Desktop
Press Twice = AppDrawer
Long Press = Open/Close Dockbar (scrollable dock for heavily used apps such as phone, messaging, music, etc that doesnt take up screen space.)
Button 3
Volume up/down
and possibly a dedicated CAPACITIVE scrolling/zooming button for fast scanning thru the app drawer and/or desktops and/or scrolling/zooming in web browsers.
(this way u can have larger widgets on ur desktops because u have a dedicated app drawer button and not one that takes up space on ur desktop. plus ur not limited to just 7 desktops like u get with HTC preview screens or launcherpro, etc because it would be easy to scroll thru 20 desktops with the dedicated capacitive scroll)
Ok. So if u put the sleep/wake on top of the phone, volume button on the left side, your left with just one button like the iphone and maybe my proposed idea of the capacitive scrolling button (thats if u like that idea).
this would be different from the iphone even though the iphone has one button because its functions are different. the iphone button does BACK+LONG PRESS=HOME. this would do a DESKTOP/APPDRAWER+LONG PRESS= DOCKBAR.
so it has 3 functions instead of 2. add in the capacitive scrolling and u have a simple easy to use device without redundant buttons thats still different from
apples iphone.
-no need for back button. browsers and apps can provide soft buttons in its user interface.
-no need for search button. widgets and apps can be used for this on ur desktop
-no need for settings button. again, widgets and apps can be used on ur desktops. put ur desktops to use!
great if u understood what i said. sorry for the rant if u didnt. just an idea and my 2cents.
.
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Click to collapse
That is steve jobs talk. -_-
LOL...I'm short of buttons. Idea = Long press Menu-> contacts and Long press Back->screen off or Camera, Trackball press -> receive/pickup call at lockscreen.
search button: yep, that button is needless, I never use it.
All other buttons are essential.
The home button and back button are very important. The back button isn't just for going one page in a browser back. Couldn't live with it. The menu button is very important, too, because it's a dedicated button which is the same in EVERY app, so you always know how to find the settings.
And then, volume and power button, you can't remove them.
PS: Two times button hitting to execute a command is silly.
UpSpin said:
search button: yep, that button is needless, I never use it.
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This is where the Galaxy S shines: the menu button acts as both the menu and search buttons.
I think the search button is indispensable. When I want to find any contact or document in my phone, any thing in google it gets me there in one step.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Lol, this dude is tripping. Giving up my 4 beautiful and all useful buttons. In instead lose screen estate cause every app is gonna make the SAME thing at the bottom as the buttons?
Lol. GTFO
You may have heard of this semi-obscure device that is basically what you are looking for. It is called the "iPhone", if you look it up on the interwebs you may be able to find something about it.
less buttons? seriously? im sorry to hear you cannot afford an iphone if you want it that bad.
I'd agree as well that some physical buttons are very useful to avoid wasting screen real estate with buttons. That said, the HTC Hero has 6 buttons (call, hang up, menu, home, back and search) which is probably a bit OTT as call and hang up are replicated on-screen all the time. But buttons like home, back and menu are essential, as others have said.
The key is that if *all* Android hardware has the same core set of buttons, then developers can rely on those buttons being there and use them intelligently. All too often you see programs which have clearly been ported over from another system without any effort having been made to adapt them to the Android system. Not only do these waste space, but they also feel counter-intuitive to an Android user because they use a different UI model. My particular pet-peeve is apps which forget to take control of the volume rocker for their audio - that makes me accidentally adjust my ringtone volume (which is normally silent!) instead of the app's volume
Umm, sorry for the rant...
Steven__ said:
...All too often you see programs which have clearly been ported over from another system without any effort having been made to adapt them to the Android system...
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Like the pause button on angry birds. Have they realised androids have a button called menu?
I love the 4/5 physical buttons on android, even if you don't use the search button a lot at first, you can always assign that button to something you want.
I wish I had 1 more button...a dedicated forward button...I get a little jumpy with my back button.
Less is not always more. Less is sometimes just less(i.e. iPhone)
mercianary said:
Like the pause button on angry birds. Have they realised androids have a button called menu?
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Well, you could try pressing the Menu button to see that they have!
veetip said:
Well, you could try pressing the Menu button to see that they have!
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Yeah I know. My point is the button onscreen is a waste of space because it it replicated by a hardware button.
The "search" button is more of a Google thing. Its a android phone (google) so they want a search option of there database to be easily accessed.
is there a way to get our phones to understand a longpress on a hardware key means to type its alternate function?'
I mean that if you press and hold q for a few second you could type 1?
i find it annoying to press alt each time because i love the keyboard and use it for most everything.
most alternate keyboards have this feature and i was wondering if it could be ported for us hardware kb users
I'd also like to see this. Perhaps this thread should be moved to the development or themes/apps threads, though, as this is more of a mod?
Wanted to know if anyone has developed an onscreen back, and menu button, my most used.
I used button savior, but was always in the way it seemed, and too many buttons I didn't need.
Curious if anyone is working on this or has a recommendation.
Thanks everyone
really need this, my buttons are going to shiet
Or a program that would make swype gestures perform home button functions
This would be awesome. My back button is a little creaky now.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
Ya, my buttons feel loose, but they creak when I press them. Feels like I am messing the phone up physically.
Swype gestures would be the best way I think, a program on that starts on boot.
bump, I believe this could be a popular application
Just got the N4 yesterday and love it but for one really irksome thing -- that the back button, which I use a lot, is on the left while the "running apps" button, which I don't, is on the right. It's a big phone so having stuff as near as possible to the bottom right-hand corner is key to one-handed operation (for righties, of course). So when I'm using Google Reader, the back button is at bottom left, and the "Up to category list" button is at top left. Really slows things down.
Am I the only one annoyed by this? Is there a fix short of a new ROM?
A rom may allow you to swap the buttons around. It doesnt bother me I hold my phone in my left hand a lot.
That was a big reason why I decided to root and go to an AOKP rom. Back button on the right side now and I'm so much happier.
It bothered me at first when moving from a Galaxy S (back on right side) to the Galaxy Nexus (back on left side). Got used to it after about a month though.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
Never noticed! But I prefer to get rid of them for the screen real estate.
It's more of a design choice rather than a pragmatic decision. Back on the left makes more sense. Some apps move the screen to the right when they go back, so tapping back on the left side and having the screen goes left makes sense thematically. I came from a Galaxy S which also had a right-side back button, and I have accustomed myself to the left-side back button with little effort. It fits the flow of apps better.
However, I'm strongly against the removal of the Search button that started in 3.x. I used Search for many apps, and it was an amazing shortcut. Fullscreen browser? Press search and you got access to the URL bar. Looking for a contact? Search button. Want to do a search in a file explorer? There's a familiar button for that. Recents should have stayed as a long press of the Home button.
Hung0702 said:
It's more of a design choice rather than a pragmatic decision. Back on the left makes more sense. Some apps move the screen to the right when they go back, so tapping back on the left side and having the screen goes left makes sense thematically. I came from a Galaxy S which also had a right-side back button, and I have accustomed myself to the left-side back button with little effort. It fits the flow of apps better.
However, I'm strongly against the removal of the Search button that started in 3.x. I used Search for many apps, and it was an amazing shortcut. Fullscreen browser? Press search and you got access to the URL bar. Looking for a contact? Search button. Want to do a search in a file explorer? There's a familiar button for that. Recents should have stayed as a long press of the Home button.
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Click to collapse
I disagree with long press on home as recents. Many android noobs didn't even know there was a a "alt tab" in Android until they've heard it from someone or was told by someone.
It's more intuitive when theres a recents button. As far as search, it's supposed to be on the top right of an app same with the legacy menu. On contacts, its on the bottom left.
IMO they should go back to the 4 capacitive buttons. Menu, Home, Back, Search. There was NOTHING wrong with this setup. Search was arguably the weakest one but with Google now, I'd say it's just as important as the rest of them. I get the fact that not all apps will have Menu, but Home and Back are just about universal, and Menu is used quite a bit too. The capacitive buttons free up screen real-estate too. I don't like styling things just for style's sake.
se1000 said:
IMO they should go back to the 4 capacitive buttons. Menu, Home, Back, Search. There was NOTHING wrong with this setup. Search was arguably the weakest one but with Google now, I'd say it's just as important as the rest of them. I get the fact that not all apps will have Menu, but Home and Back are just about universal, and Menu is used quite a bit too. The capacitive buttons free up screen real-estate too. I don't like styling things just for style's sake.
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That's the app's fault for not implementing the menu button on their app, regardless you have the legacy menu button the bottom right.
If you don't like it then install a custom ROM and change the navigation bar to your liking. It's simple as that, no reason to debate about this and how it should be on stock android.
zephiK said:
That's the app's fault for not implementing the menu button on their app, regardless you have the legacy menu button the bottom right.
If you don't like it then install a custom ROM and change the navigation bar to your liking. It's simple as that, no reason to debate about this and how it should be on stock android.
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Click to collapse
I have, and I like my current setup (Menu, Home, Back). I'm just saying that I'd rather have the 4 capacitive buttons back.
zephiK said:
I disagree with long press on home as recents. Many android noobs didn't even know there was a a "alt tab" in Android until they've heard it from someone or was told by someone.
It's more intuitive when theres a recents button. As far as search, it's supposed to be on the top right of an app same with the legacy menu. On contacts, its on the bottom left.
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If only recents was actually comparable to Windows' Alt+tab. As it is, recents is no more useful to me than it was in Gingerbread
The best button choice for me would have been, in the order, BACK, HOME, MENU. You need to go to settings? Just press the "menu" button. Need to open recent apps? Just press and hold the "home" button. Simple as that.
It was all so much more consistent when the menu button was integrated in the system. Now you have to go and look for it in a place that differs from app to app... jeez, I feel like I'm holding an iPhone.
No menu and a dedicated, invasive multitasking app is a double step backwards for me.
SkippyFlipjack said:
Just got the N4 yesterday and love it but for one really irksome thing -- that the back button, which I use a lot, is on the left while the "running apps" button, which I don't, is on the right. It's a big phone so having stuff as near as possible to the bottom right-hand corner is key to one-handed operation (for righties, of course). So when I'm using Google Reader, the back button is at bottom left, and the "Up to category list" button is at top left. Really slows things down.
Am I the only one annoyed by this? Is there a fix short of a new ROM?
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That's how us lefty's feel living in a right handed world
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Hung0702 said:
It's more of a design choice rather than a pragmatic decision. Back on the left makes more sense. Some apps move the screen to the right when they go back, so tapping back on the left side and having the screen goes left makes sense thematically. I came from a Galaxy S which also had a right-side back button, and I have accustomed myself to the left-side back button with little effort. It fits the flow of apps better.
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Click to collapse
I agree that design-wise it makes sense; the aesthete in me would take issue with a left-facing arrow button sitting on the right side, which sort of looks like it's telling you to press the button in the middle. I just think that these larger phones should design where possible for one-handed operation (and have a lefty mode too!)
note: by 'one-handed operation' no, I don't mean I'm watching porn