Looking to speed up the way you browse your phone? Try these New Android Phone Shortcuts to quickly breeze through app windows. The operating system and the Google-made apps around it have a lot of invisible efficiency enhancers. And once you know how to use these shortcuts, you’ll never look at your phone the same way again.
In this article, we have listed a handful of highlights that will give you a taste of the browsing ease you have been missing. So keep on reading to learn about the platform’s best and most broadly overlooked time-saving tricks.
What are New Android Phone Shortcuts?
Let’s start off with the Android Quick Settings panel. The swipe-down panel is used for instant access to various system functions. Typically, you have to swipe down twice from the top of your screen to see that panel in its fully expanded form. But you can actually cut those steps in half if you know the secret.
To reduce the swipes just swipe down from the top of your screen using two fingers side by side. That’ll skip over the usual partial-panel view and take you directly to the fully expanded Quick Settings collection. With all the available information in plain sight and ready for your quick-tapping pleasure.
The Three Dot App Menu
Let talk about the three-dot menu icon you see in the upper-right corner of lots of Android apps. It’s present in many apps, including Gmail as well as Chrome and Messages. It’s also common in third-party Android apps. Well, there’s an extra-efficient way to open that menu up and zip right into any item within it—in one single, smooth motion.
Rather than tapping the icon to load an app’s menu and then tapping the item you want, simply swipe downward on the menu symbol and move your finger directly to your item of choice. The menu will show up as you go, and you’ll automatically select whichever item is highlighted when you lift up your finger.
The Zipper Zoom
Pinching to zoom is fine when you’ve got your fingers free. But if you’re holding your phone in a single hand, then two-fingered action becomes hard. For those moments and any others when you want an extra-efficient zooming alternative, Android’s got a pair of obscure advanced options just waiting to be used.
The zoom feature will not work everywhere. But it is available in popular apps such as Chrome as well as in Photos (while viewing any image in full) and in Maps (while looking at any active map area).
Speedy Delete
For this you need to go into Gboard’s settings and look under “Glide typing. And confirm that the option for “Enable gesture delete” is on. Now, the next time you need to erase a word or even entire sentences in any text field. Touch your finger to the Gboard Backspace key and slide it toward the left.
The further you go, the more words you’ll see highlighted. Once you’ve got the right set of text selected, let go—and just like that, the text will disappear.
Google Photos Shortcut
The Photos Android app syncs your photos to the cloud and is even used as a local gallery for your snapshots. Google’s multimedia management tool has a handy way to change the number of pictures that are visible on your screen at any given moment.
While viewing any collection of images in Photos on your phone. Pinch your fingers outward (as in, away from each other) on the screen to change to a more zoomed-in view with fewer but larger photos being shown. And eventually you’ll reach the all-the-way-zoomed-in view of a single image.
Pinching inward, will zoom you out from that single-image view. And will go down all the way to a month-overview arrangement. That shows lots of small thumbnails broken down by date.