Using BlackBerry home screen shortcuts

The BlackBerry is set up so that when you pull it out of the holster, you can immediately dial from the home screen without hitting anything other than numbers on the BlackBerry. But if you’re anything like me, you don’t use the phone feature of your BlackBerry as much as you do the rest of the features combined. That’s where home screen shortcuts come in. Home screen shortcuts basically alludes to the ability to be able to reach any portion of your BlackBerry device from the home screen without having to click on the icon for that portion (especially handy if you’re using the BlackBerry 8800). To enable home screen shortcuts, you’ll first need to *disable* dialing from the home screen. To do so, follow these steps.

- Highlight the phone icon and click the trackball (or trackwheel)
- Click the trackball again and choose “options” from the (full) menu that pops up
- Choose general options
- Change “dial from home screen” to no (it should be yes by default)
- Save your changes and return to the BlackBerry homescreen

Now that you’ve done this, you should be able to type a single letter and access an application that corresponds with it from the list below:

Wap Browser	W
Alarm	R
Tasks	T
Calculator	U
Options	O
Address Book	A
Search	S
Notes	D
Profiles	F
Help	H
Lock keypad	K
Calendar	L
Messages	M
Browser	B
BlackBerry Messenger	N
Saved messages	V
Compose	C

These home screen shortcuts are usually most adored by those who use their BB much more for non-phone things than for the phone. Enjoy!