Tips for Tuesday: Two ways to flip between apps

by on August 7, 2012

Do you find yourself constantly doing two or three things at once on your BlackBerry? This happens to me particularly during commutes. I find myself flipping between email, a music player, and news sites (or a feed reader) constantly. When I was a BlackBerry neophyte I used to simply click the red End button to bring me back to the home scree and then select the next app I wanted to use. But that’s horribly inefficient. The BlackBerry OS has two built-in ways to more quickly flip between apps and become just a little bit more productive. Hold Menu The most widely known way to flip between open apps is to hold down the Menu button (the BlackBerry button). That will bring up a list of all open apps. From there you can scroll through with the trackpad and select the one you want to view. I’m willing to bet that more than 75 percent of BlackBerry users know of and use this method of task switching, so I won’t spend too much time on it. Alt + Back CrackBerry’s Jared DiPane doesn’t really like holding the menu button. I’m not sure why; it requires just one hand, and you don’t have to hold it down for long before the task list appears. From there it means simply scrolling through and clicking, which is pretty intuitive. But he does remind us of an alternative method. You can hold down the Alt key, and then press the Back (or Escape) key to bring up the task list. You’ll have to continue holding down the Alt Key as you press the Back key to scroll through the app list. Once you’ve highlighted the app you want to view, let go of the Alt key. This seems a bit more complex than the Menu button method, but hey, some people have different preferences.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.

1 comment… read it below or add one

ose August 19, 2012 at 4:05 am

I tried the alternative style which is holding (alt) then pressing return without removing your hands from (alt) button but it didn’t work.

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