Wednesday App review: Omni Swipe

Whenever I try out a non-gaming app, I have a rigid list of qualifications and pretty high expectations. If it’s in the Tools, then it ought to make my life easier. If it’s productivity, it ought to make me more productive. It needs to be functional with a good interface. Usually it takes me at least a couple of days with an app before I decide if it’s a keeper or not, and I do cycle them out on occasion. However, there are a select few which are simply too useful for me to even consider getting rid of. Omni Swipe is quickly rising to that list. Originally called Lazy Swipe, Omni Swipe is basically a quick launcher with a bunch of really cool features and several customization options. Right off the bat, the app is a little clunky and takes some getting used to. However, once you tweak with the settings to customize it to your preferences, you won’t ever look back. In fact, I’m starting to wonder how I put up with swiping between a million screens and searching for shortcuts. It’s  a first-world problem, I know, but I can’t say it isn’t a little frustrating. Omni Swipe can be activated by swiping from the bottom right or left. When you do so, a sort of carousel will pop up with three different sections: Toolbox (which contains shortcuts for things like sound, brightness, flashlight, Wifi and camera), Favorites (in which you can pin 8 commonly used apps for quick access) and then a third screen. On this third menu, you can choose between Interactions, which shows favorite contacts, or Recent, which shows apps you’ve recently launched. There is also a hanging dongle which you can pull down on to see a myriad of bright -colored dots which cause an ad to appear. There are no ads in the app if you leave this little tag alone, which is nice. The app itself takes a bit of getting used to and for the first hour or so, I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally clicked the tray shortcuts trying to launch Omni Swipe or how often I ended up scrolling though my screens in frustrating, trying to get the swipe to work. (pro tip: if you have this problem, go to the settings and make the swipe area larger. It will save you lots of frustration). The customization options in this app are pretty sweet too. Not only do you get to choose between a series of fun brightly-colored themes (although personally I like the default the best) but you can change the Trigger method from swiping to a white dot that you can position wherever and tap instead. There are customization options that change where you swipe from or how large of an area you can swipe from, disable the feature within certain apps or even set notifications to show up in the app. Unfortunately, this app is only available for Android devices at the moment but it is completely free to download. I have a pretty small phone (the screen is only around 4.5 inches) but I could see this being absolutely invaluable with phablets. Check out the video below from the developer for a better idea of how the app works: ]]>