HomeBot : Customize Long Tap Actions for Home Button in Android Devices

All Android smartphones and tablets have three buttons at the bottom of the screen and the one in the middle is the home button which can be used to return to the home screen. And if you long tap on on this button than the Android will show you a list of recently opened apps (the action might vary depending on different models and manufacturers). But what if you do not want to see the list of recently opened apps when you long tap on the home button? After all not all of us are interested in what we have been doing on out own phones. It could of interest to some other people, but not the phone owners themselves.

Using the free app HomeBot, you can customize the long tap actions for the home button in the Android devices. The app does not need your phone to be rooted and does not require any special privileges. But this app is designed only for the Android Marshmallow 6.x and Android Nougat 7.x. It won’t even install on the devices running on Android Lollipop or earlier versions of Android.

HomeBot for Android

The app settings give you a list of actions that you can toggle on or off. Obviously, you can toggle on only one of the actions from the list. The actions that you can choose include launching a particular app, opening a specific website, toggle flashlight (the LED flash at the back of the phone), open the recent apps screen (if your phone does not already do this), and toggle the brightness of the screen.

In the latest version of Android – Android Nougat, the default action for long pressing the home screen is to launch Google Now. This may not be acceptable to some of the users who rarely use Google Now. With the help of the HomeBot, they can change the behavior of the home button when you long tap on it.

You can get the HomeBot app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abast.homebot.