You probably have a few dozen Android
apps installed on your phone but the number
of apps that you may be using on a regular basis is likely to be small. A
recent Nielsen report says
that the average number of apps used by phone owners is just around 26 per
month. Another Comscore report suggests that people tend
to cling to a few apps they like and that nearly three of every four minutes
spent using apps was in any of four preferred apps.
Now what is the best way to arrange your favorite apps on
the home screen so that the apps you use most often are easily accessible? You
can of course arrange apps manually or put them in the dock area but wouldn’t
it be nice if the phone itself were smart enough to dynamically arrange apps on
the home screen based on your own usage. There are apps that can help.
Nokia, the company behind the Lumia series
of Windows Phones, has created Z Launcher, a
must-have Android app that helps you find anything faster on your phone be it
apps, contacts or even websites. It places you most used apps on the home
screen while everything else is just a scribble away. You also have the option
of pinning apps to the dock area just like your standard Android launcher.
Then there’s Bar Launcher, a
free Android app that will help you place shortcuts to your favorite apps in
the notification area of your phone (or tablet). The big advantage with this
approach is that you will be able to launch apps from any area of your phone
with a simple swipe from top to bottom. There’s no longer a need to close the
currently open app to launch another one – you can just open the notification
drawer and tap to open.
I would also recommend Hangar. This is an open-source app that monitors how you use apps and places the ones you use most
frequently on the home screen. Unlike the Z-launcher app, Hanger is a widget
that you can place anywhere on the home screen and because it is resizable, the
widget can display one or more rows of your most-used apps. You can also pin
the most important apps in the widget or blacklist the ones that you would
never like to show up on the home screen.
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