Gadgetory

using your Android powered device to stay in contact with the people that are important to you in your life has never been easier but you still need to fire up your contacts or dialer apps to do so I'm Joe Levi for PocketNow today I want to show you an app that makes that much easier by putting your favorite contacts in your notification shade let's say I want to get a hold of my senator in this case Orrin Hatch from the great state of Utah to do that I can come into my phone my phone app my dialer and to start typing in his phone number if I know it or I can use some of the search functionalities in there another way I can do that is to open my people or my contacts app come in see if I can find him it was it under s for Senator o for Orrin h4 hatch I don't know or I can just do a quick search not too bad but it still takes time if I'm inside of another apps am reading a political article or whatnot and I want to contact him right away I've got to get out of that web browser or Facebook or wherever it is go back home find my contacts find him it's just a lot of work well there's a way you can do that simpler on Android and that's by creating a widget so I'll show you that right now it's called the contact widget and it's just right over here a lot of people don't know this exists there's a four by one widget and a one by one widget you just simply touch and hold drop that on your home screen and select who you want that to contact now you've got a one touch way to contact whoever it is that you want by the way if you want to call senator Hatch's office that's his actual real number I'm not afraid to give that to you because it's public information that's why I'm using public officials for phone numbers and not you know fans because you wouldn't want to be woken up at 2:00 in the morning that having been said that's still a lot of work and of course if Orrin had some other ways to contact him that I had programmed in Google+ Twitter Facebook all of those would show up and I can contact him that way as well this is a very simple contact card but again what if I'm in another app isn't there an easier way well there is and this is it the app is called contacts notification and it simply puts up to six of your most common or frequently or favorite contacts whatever you want to call them up in your notification shade let's go ahead and take a look at it fire that up very simply we can now come in here and contact sander or hatch or contact Andy Rubin from Google or Erica Griffin from xda-developers let's say I want to add someone new we're gonna go ahead and open this up I've created somebody in here a lot of cameos all my fans in there hey guys big thumbs up to you go ahead and choose Benito poppin Dorf and a thumbs up to one of my other friends who's doing a cameo in that picture right there you've got this right here which lets you choose quickly if you want to dial their phone number or send a text message this is of course not his real phone number and Benito Papen Dorf is not a real person but if you want to go ahead and call that I'll get you to information once I do that I'm all set I can put up to two more in there if I want to not show the toast notification I can do that I'll show you what that means in just a minute if you don't want it to start at boot check that and if you don't want to show the notification icon up there you can check that as well icon size defaults to tiny I've set it to large that doesn't seem to do anything at least not for me we'll go ahead and update it I get a vibration letting me know that it's updated and now when I pull that down you can see mr. Benito Papen Dorf is right there nothing happens that's because it's building this card for the first time if I had my toast left on I'd get a toast notification in there saying hey we're creating this that toast stays up a little bit after this card has been created so I don't really like it I'm willing to have the lag there because I know what it's doing if we want to come back in contact Andy Rubin there we go very quick very easy and once we've opened Benito Papen Dorf once he's super fast open up again like an email I can phone I can whatever the nice thing about this app in addition to it being free on the Google Play Store is if I'm in any other app or any other home screen wherever I may be I am a swipe and a tap let me do that again to show you the right way I am a swipe and a tap away from being able to contact Benny to pop in Dorf as long as I'm a little bit patient with it coming up we like this kind of stuff if so go ahead and download it give it a shot let us know in the comments if you like it or if you don't make sure you include why if you liked the video make sure you give it a thumbs up why not tell your friends about it on Facebook Twitter or Google+ or all three if you're on all three the pocket now showing off contacts notification for Android I'm Joe Levi thanks for watching