Home screen shortcuts can replace apps for everyday Android tasks

One tap instead of several

A writer at Android Police says he has replaced most of the app icons on his Android home screen with shortcuts, and that his phone now feels quicker to use as a result. The idea is simple: instead of opening an app and tapping through its menus to reach a feature, a shortcut takes you straight to that feature.

Many Android apps offer built-in shortcuts that appear when you press and hold their icon. These can cover actions such as starting a new note or beginning navigation. Pressing and holding one of those shortcuts lets you pull it out and place it wherever there is space on the home screen, so the action you use most is always one tap away.

Which shortcuts are worth pinning

According to the article, the author pinned shortcuts for adding a new contact, writing an email in Gmail, navigating home in Google Maps, scanning documents in Google Drive, recording an audio note in Google Keep and creating a blank document in Google Docs. These are all tasks that normally require opening an app first.

Not every app supports this, and the available actions vary. The author notes that some options also depend on the phone model or the launcher in use, so what you see on your own device may differ.

Web pages, files and folders on the home screen

Website shortcuts are the second part of the setup. Pages that are visited often, such as online tools, work dashboards or reference sites, can be added to the home screen from the browser. In Chrome this is done by opening the page, tapping the three-dot menu and choosing the option to add the page to the home screen; the exact wording differs between browsers.

Files can be pinned too. In Google Drive, tapping the three-dot menu beside a document offers an option to place it on the home screen, giving a direct route to important PDFs or spreadsheets. Samsung owners have an extra choice: the My Files app can put shortcuts to individual files and folders on the home screen as well.

Shortcuts straight into Settings

The third trick targets the Settings app. Rather than digging through menus to reach a page such as Wi-Fi or display settings, you can pin a shortcut that opens that page directly. On Pixel phones and some other devices this works through the Settings shortcut widget, which you drag from the widget picker onto the home screen and then point at the page you want.

The setup differs between manufacturers, and the feature is not present on every Android phone. Samsung Galaxy owners can use the Good Lock suite instead: its RegiStar module also creates shortcuts to individual Settings pages.

Why it matters

This is a personal account rather than a product launch, but it describes features built into Android that most readers can try immediately, at no cost. The appeal is time: fewer taps for the actions repeated many times a day.

The author's conclusion is that after living with shortcuts for a while, returning to the old habit of opening apps and hunting through menus feels slow. Coverage of this kind is useful as a reminder that the home screen can be more than a grid of app icons, even if the exact steps vary by device.