Give yourself an on-demand Android taskbar

Holy moly, I am flying around my phone this week.

It’s a wild feeling — especially since Google’s grand I/O gala, which is traditionally the time when shapeshifting new Android additions are supposed to command our attention, isn’t for another couple weeks yet.

These days, though, we’ve reached a point where many of the most interesting and non-AI-gobblydegook Android innovations aren’t even coming from Google itself but rather from third-party apps, add-ons, and crafty configuring (a fancy way of saying “good old-fashioned geeky tinkering”).

And that’s absolutely the case with this latest superpower I’ve just been granted. It’s an on-demand desktop-style taskbar that makes it delightfully swift ‘n’ simple to switch over to any other app on your favorite Android gadget without first having to head back to your home screen and then poke around to find it.

Instead, you just summon that taskbar — or even set it to be always visible, if you’d rather — and, exactly like on a desktop computer, you either tap a commonly accessed app that you’ve pinned to a specific position or you tap the app drawer icon within your newfound taskbar to find any app from a list, all without ever interrupting whatever else you were doing.

JR Raphael, Foundry

It’s a serious time-saver and workflow-enhancer. And you can grant the same superpower to yourself this instant — no matter what Android device you’ve got in your greasy gibbon paws.

Best of all? It’ll take you all of two minutes to do.

Lemme show ya how.

[Keep the knowledge coming with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and my Android Notification Power-Pack as a special welcome bonus!]  

Your Android taskbar advantage

First, for a quick pinch of context: The feat at the center of this surprise is actually something that Google itself offers in certain extremely limited environments on Android — on foldable phones and tablets only, as of now — and that the company’s been rumored to be working on in a more universal manner for a while, though we’ve yet to see any concrete sign of such plans progressing in recent months and as far as the upcoming Android 17 update is concerned.

It’s also something I’ve been longing to see on the Android phone front for ages — and, to that end, something I’ve come up with wacky workarounds to accomplish a few different times now, both via official buried Android developer settings (which can work admirably well but that bring about some unavoidable awkward side effects) and via a wonderful third-party app called Panels (which is one of my favorite power-user tools but can be a bit unwieldy and overwhelming for mass consumption).

This new setup is by far the simplest, in terms of its initial setup and as far as how it works in day-to-day practice — particularly because of the instantly familiar nature of the interface it gives you, provided you’re spent at least seven seconds of your life looking at virtually any desktop computer operating system.

But enough blathering: The secret at the center of this is a clever little creation called Dsk Mode (which I’m assuming is short for Desk Mode and not Disk Mode, Dusk Mode, or Dad Socks and Knickerbockers Mode).

Vowel-challenged moniker aside, Dsk Mode does one thing and does it brilliantly well: It gives you that tantalizing taskbar we’ve been talking about — whenever you double-tap the bottom of your phone’s screen to summon it, in the setup I find most advantageous, or you opt to keep it perpetually present as an always-visible entity, if that sounds more enticing to ye.

JR Raphael, Foundry

Either way you go, getting this going really is almost shockingly simple:

• First, install the app from the Play Store (obviously, right?).
• Open ‘er up and follow the steps the app shows you — which mostly just involves tapping through to allow the thing to act as an Android accessibility service.
  • That’s a level of access Dsk Mode legitimately needs in order to be summoned as an element on top of other active apps and processes.
  • The app is clear about the fact that it doesn’t store, save, or share any manner of personal data. And it doesn’t request any other permissions, either.
• And — well, that’s about it!

At that point, you can officially start double-tapping the bottom-center of your screen to summon your snazzy new taskbar — no matter where else you are within Android or what else you happen to be doing.

JR Raphael, Foundry

But you can — and certainly should — take a moment to review Dsk Mode’s various options while you’re there in its configuration tool.

Of particular note:

• You can tap the “Pinned Apps” line to, y’know, pin apps to the taskbar and make ’em always visible and easy to access (in addition to just seeing recently used apps, as the taskbar displays by default).
• You can change the “Taskbar Style” setting from “Pop” to “Sticky” if you want your taskbar to be permanently visible instead of being summoned by that bottom-screen tapping action.
• And you can play around with the “Taskbar Height” setting to adjust exactly how large or small the taskbar is — something that’s well worth messing around with to get it how you like (and avoid having it be weirdly small and impossible to see without excessive squinting, as I had to do upon my own initial setup).

JR Raphael, Foundry

Beyond that, if you scroll down a little within the Dsk Mode configuration interface, you’ll see settings for adjusting exactly how the taskbar’s app drawer looks and works as well as for tweaking your taskbar’s visual appearance and a couple other pertinent possibilities.

There really isn’t much more to it, and you’ll probably never need to come back into the app’s settings again (though if you ever decide you aren’t into the taskbar anymore for whatever reason, you can always go back in to flip the toggle at the top into the off position — or you can just uninstall it entirely).

The one other thing worth noting is the final tab at the bottom of Dsk Mode’s configuration interface, which contains a saucy little “Support” button. If you tap that, then tap the toggle at the top of the screen that comes up next to the words “This App,” you’ll find options for upgrading to the app’s premium version — at a cost of five bucks a year or, most sensibly, $10 for a lifetime, cross-device license.

The premium subscription unlocks a handful of otherwise limited options — like being able to set more than three pinned favorites for your taskbar and being able to use the taskbar’s app drawer search function. It also eliminates the mildly annoying full-screen ads that pop up occasionally throughout the configuration interface (though you won’t see those all that often, longer term, once you’ve finished configuring the app initially).

It supports the app’s independent developer, too, of course, which is always something worth considering in an era when everyone expects everything to be free and yet the people making stuff for us still need to make a living.

Whatever you decide, you can pat yourself on the back and embrace the newfound feeling of flying around your phone and enjoying desktop-style multitasking on mobile — in a way that only Android would ever allow.

Discover even more life-enhancing Android treasures with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and my free Android Notification Power-Pack today.