It is a common knowledge that the Android smartphones come with three hardware buttons – power/lock, volume up and volume down. Some of the newer phones are coming without any volume buttons. Then there are some phones that have a few extra buttons, for example, the Samsung Galaxy series of phones have an extra hardware Home button and some of the LG phones have a hard button for snapping the picture with the camera. You can remap these hardware buttons to make them perform some actions other than the default ones. For example, you may want to use the volume down key for taking a picture with your camera or locking the screen.
The free Button Mapper app for Android can help you remap the keys and change their associated actions. This app can modify the actions for the capacitive buttons (the ones displayed at the bottom of the screen – home button, back button, menu button). However the Button Mapper app cannot change the action for the Power key or the software keys (the keys displayed inside the screen).
The first thing that you have to do is to add the Button Mapper app under the Accessibility section of the Android settings. After this you can proceed to modify the actions associated with various hardware buttons like the home button, back button, menu button, camera button, and the volume buttons. For each of these you can assign a number of actions for different duration of tap – single short tap, two short taps and one long tap etc.
They can be assigned to wake up the screen, turn on the flashlight, turn the application off in the background, change songs, take screenshots, adjust screen brightness, turn on Wi-Fi, and more. You can also run some specific tasks, depending on the availability of installed applications or run the installed apps.
The free version does not allow you to change the actions for all the buttons, however it allows you to change the actions for your home screen and volume buttons, also for the back and the menu or the last applications button – depending on your phone’s design.
You can get the Button Mapper app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton.