Space is something we could all do with a little more of, and this is certainly true of screen real estate. There are various techniques that can be used to squeeze more icons onto the homescreen of your Android phone or tablet including using folders and shrinking the size of on-screen items. Methodic gives you another option – it adds a smart Home screen shortcuts that change throughout the day.
This might sound a little odd to start with, but think about it for a moment. If you consider how you use your phone throughout the day, you probably find that you end up using roughly the same selection of apps at pretty much the same time of day. You might check your emails and Facebook when you first get up, read the news over breakfast and then listen to music on the way to work.
Rather than having to place lots of shortcuts on your Homescreen, Methodic can ensure that the shortcuts you need are at hand when you need them. The tool analyzes how you use your Android device and, most importantly, when you use particular apps.
Grab yourself a copy of the app from Google Play and get it installed. In fact this is not an app, but a widget, so once the installation is complete, tap and hold an empty section of the homescreen and choose to add a new widget.
There are three styles of Methodic widget to choose from which will display one, two or three shortcuts. If you opt to display a single icon, you can also choose to have a Methodic icon displayed, but this is not required.
Initially, there is no configuration to do whatsoever – and you might even start to feel that there is little point to using Methodic. But you need to give the app time to learn how your use your Android device and to start record the times of day you tend to use particular apps.
As time goes by, you will find that the icons displayed in the widget change throughout the day. The longer you use the app, the more accurate you should find it becomes with its suggestions. You can check its level of precision by tapping the Methodic shortcut on your homescreen.
It may well be the case that there are various background apps that keep cropping up in your list of Methodic shortcuts. These are not necessarily apps that you have manually launched, so it is possible that you don’t want them to appear in the widget.
To prevent particular apps from being displayed, head to the configuration screen and tap Add/remove items. Tick the boxes next to any app that should be excluded, and they will be ignored in future.
You can also opt to have direct dial shortcuts included in the widget. This is helpful if you tend to call the same person at the same time each day as it saves having to scroll through your address book.
Methodic is also great if you have ever wondered about how apps are used throughout the day. Head to the Calendar section of the configuration screen and you can see a breakdown of exactly when individual apps have been launched on different days of the week.
Methodic is a great example of a near-perfect productivity tool. It may not do much, but what it does do is done very well – you should find that if not only saves you space on your homescreen, but also saves you time as you will no longer have to hunt for the shortcuts you need.
Mark Wilson is a software fiend and a fan of the new, shiny and intriguing. Never afraid to get his hands dirty with some full-scale geekery, he’s always trying out the latest apps, hacks and tweaks. He can be found on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
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