QuickLauncher, as the name might suggest, is a quick launch app for the iPhone. It is a jailbreak app (only usable on jailbroken iPhones / Touches) that tracks your most-used apps and gives you the ability to quickly launch them from anywhere.
At first I didn’t like the idea that QuickLauncher builds its list of apps to launch by how often you use the apps on your iPhone. I have a bit of a thing about ever having to ‘teach’ an app anything – but in this case it works well and I soon stopped objecting to the concept. largely because as soon as you launch even a single app, QuickLauncher is picking up on it and making it available for quick launch.
QuickLauncher has no icon, it just happily lives somewhere in the shadows tracking your app usage. As with many jailbreak apps involved in app switching and multitasking, you can set the invocation method (how to launch it) within its own entry in the Settings app, or via Activator in Settings. I’ve been using shake, as in shake the device to call it up, but there are a range of screen gestures and hardware button presses that can be chosen for this.
Apps are ordered within QuickLauncher by the number of times you’ve launched them. Apps launched the most go to the top spots. If you fill up the whole screen within QuickLauncher, it still keeps adding apps as you open them, you just have to scroll down to see less-used apps.
The app is a little temperamental at recognizing the shake of the iPhone at times. Usually it responds right away, but I’ve had a number of occasions where I’ve had to shake the iPhone several times, or with a lot of gusto, to make it appear.
It also seems to interfere with the double-tap on status bar (which I use to launch the brilliant ProSwitcher app for app switching) – so I can’t go straight from QuickLauncher to ProSwitcher.
QuickLauncher works well and does exactly what it says on the box. If you’ve always wanted to be able to quick launch your truly most used apps, then this app is your new best pal, as it will keep track of which apps really are the most frequently launched so you don’t have to guess.
My biggest beef with it is that it takes up the whole iPhone screen whenever it is called up / active. No elegant placing for it – it just takes over. I’d love to see that changed in future updates – with at the very least an option for it to have a more subtle placement.
You can find QuickLauncher in the Cydia app store now, priced at $1.99.
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TAGS: iPhone app switching apps, iphone apps
