Just like Assistive Touch, Floating Touch places a floating button on your screen and you can tap on it to bring up a list of actions and shortcuts. It allows you to easily control your device or open your favorite apps without closing current app.
Install Floating Touch from the Google Play store.
Once installed and activated, you will see a grey button floating on your screen. You can move the floating button anywhere around the edges of the screen. It doesn’t stick in the center of the screen. If you place it in the center, it will automatically drift to the nearest edge.
Tap on the button and you will see a circle menu pop out in the center of the screen. The default menu comes with 4 options: Lock Screen, Clean Memory, Home Screen, and a folder containing various shortcuts.
As you can see, tapping the Home icon will bring you back to the Home screen while the Broom icon will clear the memory of your phone. For the Lock Screen icon to work, you will need to make it the device administrator. Note that if you have activated the “Device Administrators” option, you will need to deactivate it before you can uninstall this app. The folder icon is the most useful option in the list as it opens up another list of actions and shortcuts.
- Tapping the center button brings you to the customization page. This is where you can add/remove shortcuts from the menu.
As stated in the instructions, you can long press on any icon to remove it from the list. Press the “+” button to assign a new action or app. There is a total of 8 slots that you can use. Adding a folder with sub-options is out of the question unless you upgrade it to the Pro version. Other than that, you can add pretty much everything from the System Settings to Apps shortcuts .
- Other things that you can customize include the Panel color and the floating button icon, size and transparency.
The price for Floating Touch is free, but there is a Pro version where you can get it via the in-app purchase. The Pro version costs $1.99 and it allows you to add a folder (with sub-options) and use a photo for the floating button.
Conclusion
In iOS, Apple has to include the Assistive Touch themselves as they don’t allow developers to access the internal settings of the OS. This means that it is only as customizable as Apple allows it. This is what makes Floating Touch shines. The floating button is probably the only similarity it has with Assistive Touch. Other than that, you can customize every single item to your liking and make your workflow more productive. One thing that I would love to see is the ability to combine several actions into one so I can just tap on one icon to activate a few things. For example, I would like to turn on Bluetooth and Play Music at the same time. It will be great if I can do it with a single tap.
Floating Touch
