Launch Apps with Gestures

A new feature for minimizing screen time

Like any app developer, we get feature requests and one frequent suggestion has been having the ability to launch device functions quickly and without using up an entry slot in the homescreen’s list of apps. Really, it’s just an additional way to ‘Unlock-Do-Leave’ for things like a one-off Google search or taking a picture.

We’re writing about this here because, of course, we listened and are delivering this in the Before Launcher 7.2.0 release which allows you to launch up to three different apps (one for each gesture). Let’s learn how to set that up — using as an example configuring the “Swipe Up” gesture to launch the camera app.

The first step is to navigate to: Before Launcher Settings → Gestures. After that just follow these screenshots, left-to-right…

…then hit “Done”. Now you’re ready to take a picture with just a gesture.

First note: this feature addition is part of the free version (we keep doing it that way).

Second note: if you are new to Before Launcher gestures you might, as you try them out, also play around with the toggle for “Apps fill screen width”; depending on your homescreen you might find one setting works better for you; this toggle is at Settings → Homescreen . Here’s a section explaining a bit more about what this setting does:

The primary benefit of enabling apps to fill the screen width is that it’s easier to tap on a home screen app horizontally — there’s more room for error as you don’t need to tap directly on the text, which is great if you have apps with short labels.

By disabling this, you will have more room to perform gestures, specifically double-tapping. The potential drawback here is that you’ll have to be more accurate with your taps (horizontally).

One way to remedy this is to use the horizontal alignment feature to left, center, or right align your home screen apps which will move where the text is aligned on the screen.

On tablet + landscape form factors, we recommend leaving this enabled since reaching for text may be tricky.

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At this writing, the 7.2.0 release is just rolling out — most people use auto-update, but if you don’t, make sure you do a manual update.

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To learn more about who we are, check us out at Before Labs. To download the Before Launcher, click this link.

If you have other ideas or comments of any type feel free to email us at: feedback@beforelabs.com