QuickDesk: A Quick and Easy Way to Multi-Task on Android!

You’re on your Android phone and you want to play some music when you’re in the middle of a game. Or you’re texting someone and you need to turn the WiFi on for some information. It can get a little messy trying to multi-task on an Android phone.

This is where Home Screen Launchers come into play, allowing you to quickly switch between apps, so you don’t need to exit out of what you are doing at the time.

Many Android phones ship with a pre-installed launcher app, but there are many other better options available on the Market for free download. ADW Launcher, LauncherPro and HelixPro being some of the more popular ones.

Today we’re going to take a look at the features of QuickDesk, a BETA Dashboard app by Ruqq.

Installation is pretty simple, you either create an account with QuickDesk and use their web installer or use a barcode scanner on your Android phone.

Once installed there are two features you will need to know how to work, that can make your life much simpler. The QuickPanel and the Edit Mode.

QuickPanel

Shows up when you double tap your home key. You would have to set QuickDesk as the Home application before you do that.

Here’s how: Press Home and set QuickDesk as the default from the list of launchers.

So say I’m searching on Google and I remember that I had to text a friend about something important. All I do is double tap the Home key and QuickDesk shows up with the QuickPanel below it.

The interface looks simple and neat. QuickPanel shows you up to 30 most recently used apps and you can slide across the list. The great part is QuickPanel is optional. So you can hide it by pressing on the QuickPanel bar.

The screen would then show only the QuickDesk options and looks like this:

If your Home key is not working, you can also set it so that QuickDesk is displayed on the long-press of the search key.

If you have another Launcher installed that you really like, you can set that to show up as well. After installation, QuickDesk gives you an option to have another Launcher come up on the single tap of the Home Key.

Edit Mode

This helps you to move and remove stuff around QuickDesk. You can access this mode by Menu>Edit or a long-press on any item. Let’s take a look at a few things you can do.

1. Adding to QuickDesk:

Press any empty space on the screen in the Edit Mode for a couple of seconds, and this pops open. Choose whatever you would like to have show up.

I found this to be a really neat option. Using this you can add pages you have bookmarked, contacts, GMail labels and so on to the QuickPanel.  Like you can see above, I added a Facebook widget so I can directly post to my wall while I’m in the middle of something and also take a quick look at the News Feed.

2. Removing from QuickDesk:

A single press on any item in the Edit Mode would display QuickAction.

You have options to remove the item, uninstall it or view the details. So there’s no hassle of dragging icons to the Trash Bin over here.

3. Move items from QuickPanel to QuickDesk:

All you have to do here is drag items from the QuickPanel slide bar and drop them on to the QuickDesk screen.

These are the major features in QuickDesk that you would need to know in order to start using it. Apart from these, they also provide Application Badges.

Notice those star-type badges over some of the items like Gmail? That’s the running badge that is attached to item that has been left running in the background.

We feel using QuickDesk can make multi-tasking on Android Phones a breeze! Do you agree? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

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