Add Start Menu to Android Devices with the Taskbar App

Many experts are betting that in the near future the ages old physical keyboard and mice will disappear as the new age touch-screen computers become much more popular. But I personally think that physical keyboards or mice are not going anywhere – after all who can type in long documents or email messages with the speed or the convenience of a good physical keyboard? Actually you can have the best of the both worlds and attach your USB keyboard or USB mouse to your Android devices and use them to make it much more convenient for you to type in those long documents. Of course, for this you would need a USB OTG adapter and your device must support OTG (on the go) technology.

If you are attaching any standard USB keyboard to your Android tablet and want to make the full use of the Windows logo key in the keyboard (which is designed to work with Windows only), then you can install the Taskbar app for Android. This app adds a Start Menu in your Android device which works very similar to the one you find in Windows.

Taskbar for Android

After installing the app, you can configure the Taskbar app to appear either as a list or as grid. The start menu can appear on the left or the right side of the screen. By default, it displays only a list of all the apps installed in your device. But you can choose to display a list of recently used apps instead. You can also use this app as the home-screen replacement. In order to use the Windows logo key shortcuts, you have to change Android settings and set this app as the search assistant (by default Google is search assistant).

Taskbar for Android

The taskbar app shows the start menu icon tapping on which you can view a list of all the apps in your Android device or a list of recently used apps depending on your configuration. If you long tap on this icon, then it will show you options to open the settings for the app or to quit the app.

Conclusion: Taskbar app for Android introduces a small start menu for your Android devices. It works great if you are using any standard USB keyboard attached to your Android tablet through an OTG adapter. You can use it to switch across multiple apps and open windows which is a new concept in Android Nougat.

You can download the Taskbar app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmerbb.taskbar&hl=en.