Quickpick - an iOS quick launcher that is even better than the dock

QuickPick ($1, iOS, universal) will let you add a one-touch shortcut to up to 10 different “actions” on your iPad or iPhone/iPod touch, all from the pull-down “Notications” menu on your iOS device.

[UPDATE]: Sadly, Apple has removed Quickpick from the App Store.

“What’s an ‘action’?”

An “action” can be any one of a number of things:

• make a phone call
• send an SMS
• launch an application
• add an item to OmniFocus
• open an URL
• post to Facebook (Ok, me neither, but it is an option)
• do just about anything that any iOS app is designed to let you do when starting that app

Here’s a list of what I’m using it for:

This is like the dock, but better

iOS has always had the “dock” at the bottom of each page of the Springboard. On the iPhone or iPod touch it holds up to 4 apps, on the iPad it can hold up to 6.

Quickpick can hold 10 on the iPhone or 20 on the iPad.

But that’s not the only reason it’s better. It’s also better because all the dock can do is launch those applications. Quickpick can launch an application and tell it to take a specific action.

Add a new event to OmniFocus

For example, take one of my favorite apps, OmniFocus. I can put OmniFocus in my dock, but if I want to add a new item to OmniFocus, I have to press the home button to see the dock (assuming it’s one of the 4 items on my dock, otherwise I have to find it), then once it launches, I have to tap on the icon to add a new item. With Quickpick, I can pull down the Notification center from anywhere and tap “Omnifocus Add Todo” and when OmniFocus launches, it will automatically show me the screen to add a new item.

To add this, I just set a shortcut in Quickpick with whatever title I want (I chose “Omnifocus Add Todo”), use omnifocus:///add for the link (note there are three / there!)

“Give me 5 minutes…”

I use Due all the time to set myself a reminder. I added a “5 Minute Reminder” link for Due using due://x-callback-url/add?secslater=300 as the “Link” in Quickpick. (See Due’s documentation for more of these.)

Now whenever I need to set a timer, I pull down the Notifications panel, tap “5 Minute Reminder” and Due opens, ready for me to enter a title for the reminder (it’s optional, but I always put something in there to remind myself why the alarm is going off). I can change the time if I want, or just add the reminder.

I can make several of these in Quickpick: one of 5 minutes, one for 10, one for 15, and then just tap the one I want.

Use Google Voice more effectively

I’m a huge fan of Google Voice. It provides free SMS messaging (for those folks who aren’t on iMessage), and if I call people using a Google Voice app, they’ll see my Google Voice number instead of my cell phone number.

The trouble is that it’s just so dang easy to use the built-in Phone or Message apps, especially if I need to do something quickly, I might be tempted to skip using Google Voice. Unfortunately the official Google Voice app does not have a documented URL scheme (that’s what iOS calls these special URLs). You can launch the app with googlevoice:// but that’s about it. However, if you use GV Mobile+ ($3) or GV Connect ($3), they both include much more robust options.

GV Connect has an option called “Quick Settings” which let you save specific options, such as which phones ring. For example, when I’m home and want to make an outgoing call through Google Voice, I want that call to be initiated through my land-line so I don’t use my cell phone minutes. For incoming calls, I want my home phone to ring, as well as my iPhone, but not my phone at my day job. In GV Connect, I have a “Quick Setting” for those options called “Home.” Likewise, when I am at my day job, I don’t want my home phone to ring when someone calls my Google Voice number, and I want to initiate calls through my work phone. I have a “Quick Setting” for those options called “Work.” Finally, if I am neither at home nor at work, I only want my iPhone to ring for incoming calls (not my home or office phones) and I want to use my iPhone for initiating calls. I have a “Quick Setting” for that called “Away.”

That’s a great feature, but the truth is, I don’t use it all that often. Why? Either I forget, or I’m lazy. But now I can just pull down the Notifications window and tap whichever “Quick Setting” preset I want to use, and GV Connect will launch and set it all up for me. Even if I put GV Connect on my Dock, I couldn’t do that.

Many apps, but not all

The good news is that many iOS apps have their own URL schemes. You can find many of them at http://handleopenurl.com/ and http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes but just because you don’t see an app there doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t one. To test one, just go to Safari on your iOS device and type whatever:// and see what launches. Usually nameofapp:// is a safe bet, although sometimes they are more cryptic. Facebook has dozens of them.

If you want to do more than just launch the app, you’ll need to find some sort of documentation about what the app supports. Check the sites listed above, or take a trip to your favorite search engine and plug in the name of your app with the words “URL scheme” and you will probably find what you need. If you come up empty, email the developer.

Quickpick isn’t the first app to come up with this idea. App Switcher (also $1) has been around for a few weeks, but the reviews suggest that it is fairly difficult to configure. Quickpick is as simple as I can imagine, although there was one little “catch” when setting it up, which I’ll explain.

One last thing: configuring Quickpick in Notifications

By default, Quickpick shows 5 items in the Notifications center. You can change this to 1, 5, or 10 (or 20, on the iPad), by going to Settings » Notifications on your iOS device and then scroll down to “Quickpick” and tap on it, which should show you this:

Note that in Quickpick itself you can create as many as you want, but the setting in Notifications controls how many are actually displayed.

(Why allow you to create more than 10 if it can’t show you more than 10? Because you can change the order of them by tapping the ‘Edit’ button in Quickpick and then moving individual entries up or down. Maybe there are some you only need to use occasionally, so you can move them down to the bottom when not needed.)

My suggestion is to start out with 5 and see if you actually use them. If you find you want more, change it to 10. Just remember not to “Clear” them out of the Notifications window.

If you did clear them out of the Notifications window, read on.

“Oh crap, I accidentally cleared Quickpick out of Notifications!”

If you pull down the Notifications window and then tap ‘Clear’ all of the Quickpicks will go away.

Oops.

Now what? How will you get them back again?

Simple: Launch the Quickpick app, scroll to the bottom, and tap ‘About Quickpick’ and then choose “Recreate Quickpicks.” They will be added back to your Notifications pull-down.

(That’s why I recommend just using 5 until you are sure that you need more; otherwise, it takes up a lot of space in your Notifications window.)

Even if you just use it as a basic app launcher, Quickpick is worth more than it’s $1 price tag.