Gizbeat generally doesn’t take the time to post little tips and tricks and maybe some of you already take advantage of this, but this is one of the things I have found very useful.
While many of us know that a two-finger pull-down on the notification bar will access our toggles, this is not conducive to single-hand operation. What are you doing with your other hand? Well, I don’t want to guess… But let’s just say there are times when we need the toggles and both hands aren’t readily available. It’s also of course possible to pull down the notification and tap the icon to bring up toggles, but this is an extra step we can eliminate.
We accomplish the trick by downloading Apex or Nova (or any launcher that supports gestures). I use Apex, so I’ll go through the steps in Apex. Other launchers should be similar.
- Download and install Apex from Play
- Tap Menu from the home screen and select ‘Apex Settings’
- Select ‘Behavior Settings’
- You’ll see ‘Gestures’ in the Behavior Settings sub-menu. Select the gesture you wish to use. I use ‘Swipe Down’
- Select ‘Show Quick Settings’
Bam. That’s it. Return to your home screen and now anytime you use the gesture you chose, you’ll get the quick settings/toggles.
As I said, I’m not usually one for posting little tips like this, but I’ve found it’s made things significantly easier, so wanted to share it with those who weren’t aware an option like this existed.
You can also go ahead and select different gestures you often access – for example swipe up to access a frequent application (browser etc…), or open the app drawer. Maybe not quite as useful, because these things are already easy actions (eg, tap Chrome to open Chrome), but it still saves a bit of time to swipe up to access an app if you’re not currently on the home screen that contains the shortcut. As well, you don’t have to be as precise as when tapping a shortcut – plus, it just feels cool.
Leave a Reply