Torchie : Use Volume Buttons for LED Flashlight in Android

Even though the new versions of Android operating system including Android Lollipop and Android Marshmallow come with a Torch light option built inside, there are users who find  using this torch light confusing. This is basically because while trying to turn on the LED flashlight, you have to take too many steps – unlock the lock-screen, pull down the notification bar, open the quick settings panel and then turn on the LED flashlight. When in emergency you could end up touching something else and by the time you finally manage to turn on the torch, the necessity of the torch could disappear altogether.

If you also suffer from the clumsiness usually exhibited during the dark nights when you are trying to turn on the flash-light in your phone, then you might find the Torchie app very useful. The Torchie app does not need the lock-screen to be unlocked or even launch the app. In fact, if you have the Torchie app installed in your phone then you can turn on the LED flashlight of your phone using only the volume up and volume down buttons. All you have to do is press the volume up and volume down buttons together at the same time.

But before Torchie can make the flashlight go on and off, you have to give some permissions to the Torchie app. These permissions allow Torchie to capture the hardware key events for the volume keys and only after this the flashlight is turned on. According to the developers of Torchie, these permissions are actually some sort of flaw in the files used by Android.

In the settings for the Torchie app, you can make Torchie not disturb the lock-screen or screen  in general. This is very useful as now you can turn on the Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash Player plugins. You can also check the time period for automatically turning off and make it vibrate when the torch has been turned on.

You can downloaded & install the Torchie app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.blogspot.anselmbros.torchie.