FAQ: The LONG Press and Menu Key

[640k]

If you don't know already, magical things can happen if you long press buttons in Android and "hidden" menus will appear if you hit the Menu button.

But did you know if you long press the menu key, while the menu is open, you'll get a list of shortcuts to those items in the menu?

Here's a handy list of things that can be accomplished with a long-press or through finding menus you may have not known existed (feel free to contribute):

From anywhere:
LONG-PRESS the home icon to bring up a list of the last six applications used.

In the Browser:
LONG-PRESS the back button for a complete history of pages you've visited, most visited pages and your bookmarks. The same can be accomplished by hitting menu - bookmarks.

If you long-press the items in your history, another menu appears, allowing you to open the link in various ways, create a bookmark or delete it from history (handy).

From the Settings Menu (Home - Menu - Settings):
MENU brings up options of display "type" in Manage Applications, that will allow you to view only Downloaded apps, Running apps or All apps when Filter is selected. This can be handy for people who don't have or don't want other task management programs to force close apps.

From Any Contact:
Touch their image icon and a speak bubble will appear with a list of options of how to communicate with that contact.

[TBird1]

Cool !

Thanks for posting, a few things there I didn't know about that will be really useful.

[Joshhawaii]

Funny thing I discovered today: The little card that came in the Nexus One box does explain how to get to that Menu of recently used applications by holding home. It also adds: Holding Menu will bring up the On Screen Keyboard, and holding search enables voice search.

Anyone else find some cool shortcuts like this that make the N1 even more awesome?

[NeonMonster]

These have been noted in this forum in different threads, but when they keyboard is up, doing a DOWN swipe from the top row of keys downwards, makes the keyboard go down without pushing back!

Similarly, doing a LEFT to RIGHT swipe on the keyboard goes straight to voice to text.

[Kit Fox]

Originally Posted by NeonMonster

...but when they keyboard is up, doing a DOWN swipe from the top row of keys downwards, makes the keyboard go down without pushing back!

Is this for 2.1 or does it work for 2.2 also?

[Fury]

holding the menu button in most apps seems to bring up the keyboard