Google Android doesn’t really come with an app switching utility. You can press and hold the Home button to bring up a list of recently launched apps, but it doesn’t let you know which are currently running, and it only shows icons for 8 apps at a time. Visual Task Switcher is a third party tool that addresses both of those issues.
Once you install Visual task Switcher, you can press the Home button to bring up thumbnail previews of currently running applications. Up to 9 apps will fit on a screen, and if you’re running 12 apps, or 19, or 27, the extras will spill over onto additional screens. Just drag to the right or left to see more running apps.
You can switch to any app by clicking on the thumbnail. You can also close apps by pressing and holding their icons and selecting “Force Close.”
Of course, if you set Visual Task Switcher as your default Home app, that means single-tapping the Home button won’t bring up your Home screen anymore. But all you have to do is tap once to bring up Visual Task Switcher, and tap again to go home. A quick double-tap will pretty much bring up the Home screen without ever showing you the task switcher.
The full version of Visual Task Switcher will set you back $1.99, but there’s also a free, ad-supported version, pictured above. If you get tired of looking at the ads at the top of the app switcher, you can always pony up the two bucks for the full version.
Visual Task Switcher is designed to work with all versions of Google Android, although some users report that it causes problems if they have other third party Home screen apps installed.
via Android Police
