App Picker Android

App Picker Android: a reader asks..

Hi Coach, I have a Droid Turbo smartphone and really like using Android. But my friends with iPhones have a quick way to find an app on their phone by searching, whilst I have to swipe across screen after screen to get to an app I want to run. Heck, they can even use the same search feature for contacts, emails, and the web! Is there something I’m missing with Android to more quickly get to an app and/or find things?

If you’re like me, you have a lot of apps on your smartphone. So many that you forget what you have, or forget where it is. You’ve already moved the most-used apps to your main home screen, but there are other apps you use on occasion that aren’t there. The way you’ve been finding them isn’t uncommon – swiping page after page and looking for apps by eyeballing each page-full.

The Android operating system has by default a search tool built into the home page called the Quick Search Bar. Older phones may have a search button that uses the familiar magnifying glass icon. But the way this has been built may not be the most user-friendly way to find apps or other things on your phone. Here’s where the Google Play Store can help you.

Take a look at this app: App Dialer T9 by Aleksey Masny. This app does essentially what iPhone’s Spotlight Search does, but on your Android-powered smartphone. For iPhone users, they can just swipe down on their screen to get to the search tool, and then start typing the name of the app. The trick is to just start typing. As you fill in characters, the search tool starts instantly matching up results, so as soon as you see the app you want appear on the screen, you can tap that to open it. The app lets you use either a T9 or a qwerty keyboard for quick typing, and lets you search both apps and contacts. The T9 keyboard (that telephone keypad with letters under the numbers) is great for one-handed searching, while the qwerty keyboard is really fast. Give it a try, it’s free! (has some in-app purchasing for additional functionality)