Absence of multitasking is one of the shortcomings of Android phone. While it is easy to customize your device with shortcuts and widgets, switching between apps and accessing other settings still requires exiting one and relaunching the other form the home screen or app drawer. Sidebar Plus answers this issue and on your android, you can get the true multitasking benefit.
Sidebar Plus is a deceptively simple app that makes multitasking easier on your Android phone by giving you instant access to apps, shortcuts, widgets, contacts and more from anywhere on the phone. It runs on Android 2.2 and above, and it is light, fast and customizable to your taste.
The app adds a sidebar bar (or sidebars) to your device that appears whenever you swipe from the left side (or right side if right sidebar alignment) of the screen and can be activated even when you are already inside an app.
On this sidebar, you can put things like apps, contacts, commonly accessed settings, shortcuts, and DashClock extensions as well as widgets. You can also tweak visual aspect of the bar with themes, colors, icon size, and opacity and bar alignment (left/right).
How to configure Sidebar Plus?
Once the app is installed (download link at the bottom of this post), run the app and tap on “Manage Bars” option. You’ll see three options – Apps, Big bar and Settings.
Tap on “Apps” option to add app shortcuts. Just select apps that you want to add on the bar. The Big bar (middle bar) lets you add recent apps, weather, favorites, etc. on the middle bar.
The Settings option lets you add various phone settings such as brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. on the bar.
Sidebar Plus can be downloaded free from Play Store or its APK from XDA.
