As much as I love it, it’s generally considered that there isn’t much room for improvement with regards to multitasking on Android. One developer didn’t think so, and boy, did he prove others wrong!
Enter QuickDesk. A free multitasking Android app that is so useful and so addictive, that you’d start missing it if you ever had to uninstall it. I actually did that for a couple of days and went mad without the app.
Multitasking on Android
From a functionality point of view, QuickDesk does something really simple: it kind of provides you with a secondary home screen, where you can put things you may need to access quickly and that in turn, helps you to multitask on your Android phone. After installing the app, you can get to this secondary home screen by double tapping the home screen button.
At this point in the post, you might be wondering why on Earth would you want a second Android home screen. Imagine a scenario where you are on a train, happily reading away the latest John Grisham ebook on your Kindle App when you realize that a famous celebrity is travelling with you. You want to tweet the zillion OMGs going through your head, but it turns you off when you realize that you’ll have to press the home button, swipe across your screens till you reach the Twitter widget, type in what you want to say and update the world about what you’re doing. Then relaunch Kindle, and get back to reading your ebook.
In the QuickDesk world of multitasking on an Android, all you’d have to do is double tap your home button. This would bring up QuickDesk, which would hold the widget you want to use. Update your status, hit back and carry on reading your ebook.
Installing QuickDesk and multitasking on Android
Once you install QuickDesk, the initial configuration is fairly simple and guides you through the entire process of setting up your secondary home screen and multitasking Android nirvana. The handy tutorial that launches upon loading will show you everything that you need to do to get it running properly. The QuickDesk screen can pick up all kinds of things that you expect a normal home screen to accept. So you can go ahead and add your widgets, folders, app shortcuts, etc. without thinking twice.
The other awesome part of QuickDesk is that it also provides a secondary dock wherein you can add your favorite apps. To access that, you’ll need to swipe up from the bottom of the screen in QuickDesk.
Organizing various icons or widgets is also not a problem since long pressing any widget/icon takes you into edit mode. From there, you can happily play around with each individual item and also move it within the home screen if so desired.
In the month that I’ve been using QuickDesk, I’ve found that I am multitasking on my Android much faster and that’s really boosted my productivity whenever I’ve had any critical spreadsheets that I’ve needed to view from work. Now, I can’t dream of living without QuickDesk. It’s become second nature to me. Let us know about your experience with QuickDesk or other multitasking Android apps in the comments.
