Getting Started

Quikshort is an app that let’s you create Shortcuts and Tiles from variety of categories.

Introduction

You can create shortcuts from the following categories:

• Apps: Apps are regular shortcuts which you see on your launcher.
• Activities: Activities of apps (private activities are prevented by system from being launched by other apps).
• Contacts: Contact shortcuts are three types.
  • Calls: Directly calls the number (requires call permission).
  • Dail: Opens dailpad with selected number typed.
  • Profile: Opens contact profile in Google Contacts.
• Files: Creates shortcuts for specific files (works on only files which you will provide permission when selecting).
• Folders: Creates shortcuts to folders. (currently supports only third party file managers).
• Settings: Settings activities which can be used to create shortcuts to specific settings screens.
• Websites: Create shortcuts to URLs and deeplinks.
• Intents: Let’s you create shortcuts by defining intent itself. You can read more about intent in following sections. Intent shortcuts are two types:
  • System Intents: By default system provides set of intent actions like settings and others. You can start creating shortcuts for these if wanted.
  • Custom Intent: Here you can define an intent from scratch. This is useful when you have custom actions and data for intents.

Working

Quikshort works based on a concept called Intents. Let me explain what is an Activity before going to intents.

• Activity: An activity is a fundamental component, combined of these is what makes an application. An activity is responsible for execution of a task. Activity is the starting point for any task. In simple terms, just remember that an activity is a screen in an app. For example, whenever you click on any app icon in your launcher, it starts Main activity of that application. Just like that, there can be any number of activities. Activities are more than just screens, you can read more technical about them in Android documentation here.
• Intents: Intents are like telegrams which carries information from one activity to another. This is how different activities and applications communicate and share information with each other. Each activity is defined with set of rules, intent contains this data/rules which will be used to find the target activity. Take the same example as before, when you click on that app icon in your launcher, it will fire an intent that contains the data of Main Activity which is responsible for launching that app. You can read more about intents here.

This is how Quikshort is working, it will let you create those intents to various activities, so that you can save time by launching that specific activity instead of going through whole app journey everytime.

Note

Android allows making activities as private. System prevents launching these activities from other apps. That is why it is not possible to create shortcuts for these kind of activities.

Intents

The main parts in an intent are action and data. If you want to launch this intent for a specific app, then package and class will come into picture.

• Action: Action defines intent action to perform. Ex: ACTION_VIEW
• Data: Data contains the information to carry out in Uri format. Ex: https://atolphadev.com
• Package: Package will be used when you want to launch this intent for a specific app. Ex: com.android.chrome
• Class: Each activity is defined as class, so we can use class to specify activity to launch. Ex: com.google.android.apps.chrome.IntentDispatcher
• Category: Category defines what kind of intent it is. Ex: android.intent.category.BROWSABLE
• Extras: Extras carries extra data in key value pairs. Ex: S.testKey=testValue