Industry Insights

Blog, Tip of the Week

Tip of the Week: Leverage Android “Activities” for More Effective Shortcuts

by | Monday, June 26th, 2023

If your Android devices look anything like ours, they probably have several applications on them which make navigating the app pages a bit tedious at best. You can make navigating your various applications much less of a pain if you make shortcuts on your home screens which take you to the apps you use most frequently.

Make Shortcuts in Android

To add an Android app to your home screen, find the app on your Apps screen, usually accessed by swiping up on your device while it is unlocked, then long-press the app. You’ll see the option for Add to Home on the bottom. When you tap this option, the app shortcut will appear on your home screen, though not necessarily on the home screen you want, so take a moment to long-press it and drag it to the appropriate location, like a folder.

About Android Activities

You might also notice some other shortcuts built into the app. These appear when you long-press the applications. The way that Android apps work is through what are called “activities.” These activities are what allow apps to open to specific screens like, for example, when you tap on a notification on your phone. One great example of this is the Gmail app, which might have activities available to compose a new message, or to view inboxes for your various email accounts. YouTube has activities for Subscriptions and Search, and so on. You might be surprised by the functionality immediately available to you through activities.

Add Activities to Your Home Screen

Many applications have shortcuts to these activities built right into them, and you can access them right from the app shortcut itself. All you have to do is long-press the app you want to access. If the app has activities built into it, then you’ll see them in the window that appears. To make things even more convenient, you can tap and drag the activities from these menus to the home screen to make a shortcut to that activity. Pretty handy stuff!

There are other ways to build your own shortcuts to specific activities within apps, but they generally require a third-party application, so we won’t be covering this topic here today. If you want some help, we are always ready to assist you with your technology, though! Just give us a call at 1-855-405-8889 to learn more.

A Glimpse Into What Compliance Looks Like for Businesses

Apr 7, 2025 | ,

It’s easy to see all the reasons why you should make data regulations and compliance a priority. After all, you want to ensure you don’t violate the trust and security of your customers, as well as the integrity of your operations. If you make even one mistake, it...

AI Search Isn’t There Yet

Apr 4, 2025 | ,

People do this all the time: if they don’t know an answer, they just make something up that sounds right. It turns out AI has the same bad habit. A Study Put AI Search to the Test, and It Did Not Go Well Researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism (part of...

Remote Work Is Great, but There Are Some Pitfalls

Apr 2, 2025 | ,

Do you have employees working remotely? If you do, the real question is, are you doing everything you can to keep them productive and secure? Remote work is awesome, but it comes with its fair share of risks. Today, we get into how to competently confront them. Remote...

Hiring IT is Hard (Here’s How to Make It Easier)

Mar 28, 2025 | ,

Do you have someone on your staff who can handle most IT-related issues for your business? If not, we’re sure your organization feels it in more ways than one. The issues that come from not having IT help are only made more frustrating when it comes time to find IT...

Let’s Take the Lid Off of CAPTCHA

Mar 21, 2025 | ,

We've officially reached the point where humans have to prove they're, well, human just to access websites. One of the most common ways to do this? CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It might sound...

Automation Isn’t Always the Best Business Option

Mar 17, 2025 | ,

Automation makes sense from an operations standpoint, and people see this despite the many who advocate for scaling back to save jobs. For every task that can be completed, however, less than half can be automated. When you consider all the tasks that a human might be...

More Reading from Industry Insights:

AI Search Isn’t There Yet

by | Apr 4, 2025 | ,

People do this all the time: if they don’t know an answer, they just make something up that sounds right. It turns out AI has the same bad habit. A Study Put AI Search to the Test, and It Did Not Go Well Researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism (part of...

Hiring IT is Hard (Here’s How to Make It Easier)

by | Mar 28, 2025 | ,

Do you have someone on your staff who can handle most IT-related issues for your business? If not, we’re sure your organization feels it in more ways than one. The issues that come from not having IT help are only made more frustrating when it comes time to find IT...