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“Hack” iOS to Quickly Perform Tasks with Launch Center

Launch Center

If you’re an Android user who also has an iOS device, iOS’s simplicity can be frustrating. I remember when I first switched to Android, it suddenly made my iOS devices feel like Fisher-Price toys. In hindsight, that was a pretty snooty viewpoint. iOS’s simplicity is both a strength and a weakness. Still, it’s cool when something comes along that lets you feel like you’re customizing your iOS device. Launch Center, an app that lets you perform many tasks with two finger taps, is one such app.

Launch Center’s concept is pretty simple. You tap the app to start it, and then are presented with a list of activities that you can preset. Some activities, such as starting a specific function in an app, are ones that I didn’t even think possible in iOS. Take a look at my Launch Center screen, below, for some examples.

Launch Center full

You can see that from Launch Center I can automatically make OmniFocus start at the “New Item” entry box. I can also start a new email message with a predefined subject, perform a Google search of the item on my clipboard, add a clipboard item to Instapaper, launch a particular website, and more. The ability to interact with applications such as OmniFocus is one of the best features of the app. Several apps in addition to OmniFocus support custom actions, including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Instagram, and Facebook.

Launch Center is currently $0.99 in the App Store.

Have you figured out any other ways to launch apps in iOS?

Launch Center