Google built the Android operating system to be intuitive and easy to use. It was obviously made for touch screens, and it has integrated on-screen buttons for a while now, also, most apps have been designed to provide a coherent functionality across the entire OS. The user interface features some basic gestures to control all of the elements displayed on the screen such as tap, swipe, or tap and hold. Still, there are some shortcuts for some features that might not be very obvious or intuitive, so here are 5 useful shortcuts in Android to access some features more easily.
The most recent version of Android, known as Android 6.0 or Marshmallow, didn’t bring many visual changes compared to its preceding version, but it added some new features and it made devices natively compatible with newer technologies. Additionally, it includes a new shortcut to access the camera app by simply double clicking the power button, this works when the screen is unlocked, but the camera is now accessible from any screen. Marshmallow also introduced some changes to the Do Not Disturb mode, which silences calls and notifications from the device, and in this version you can easily activate this mode by pressing and holding the volume down button, so only the alarms will be audible; to activate the sounds in the device you just need to press and hold the volume up button. To take a screenshot, users have probably been using the volume-down and power button shortcut, but in Marshmallow, they can take a screenshot by pressing and holding the Home button, which launches Google Now on Tap, but there’s a new share button at the left of the bar at the bottom, by tapping this button, a screenshot will be taken and users can easily save or share the image.
The following two shortcuts are not exclusive to devices running Marshmallow, the first one brings some voice controls to Android, as just by saying “OK Google” on any screen, the app can control some aspects in your device as well as providing information from any topic. This can be activated in the Settings menu of the Google app, then go to Voice and “OK Google” detection, and choose to use it from any screen, you can go even further and set it to work when your device is locked by activating this option on the “Personal results” section. Finally, you can get information from any app, such as the amount of storage it is using, the amount of data it consumes, see when is the app used by default, etc, by tapping and holding its icon on the app drawer, and then slide it to the “App info” icon at the top of the screen and then release it.
