Comment by BoppreH

20 days ago

I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget, not a shortcut. Give it a try!

I just installed Octopi on this thread's recommendation. Pretty good so far, and I'm happy to remove the useless Google search bar from the bottom of my Pixel (I use Kagi and Firefox, neither of which can be configured on that bar). Also satisfied how you can resize widgets to any size, regardless of what the widget asks for.

That's similar functionality, but it's not a Shazam Now shortcut. I really don't want any widgets -- at all, ever. And I need labels -- remembering arbitrary iconography is a silly task when phonetic written language exists.

Just a shortcut is fine. Or at least: It had been fine for nearly a decade.

This, right here: This is what I want, and what I was using with Nova Launcher until late last night. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/01/27/shazam-gets-updated...

:)

(Besides, Shazam is just a singular example. I had other shortcuts that I also used. I'm really rather disinterested in finding individual workarounds for each of them.)

  • As an unfortunate reply to myself, I'd like to ask a question to nobody in particular: Do y'all not use shortcuts? I think that they are pretty neat, and we've had them on Android since around version 7.1.

    And the reason I ask this is because when I Google up different combinations of nouns, verbs and word usements for my problem of Android shortcuts and Octipi Launcher, I fairly-consistently find my own recent comments on HN (above, in these threads; within the bounds of this posting) in the top 5 results.

    And that tells me that I am not only preaching to the choir, but the choir only exists of one member. And that member is me.

    So I guess I am thus preaching to myself.

    Awesome!

    And thus, perhaps I am much more of an outlier than I ever imagined.

    So the question stands: Am I really looking in from the outside with my quest for Android shortcuts that we've had for almost a decade? Is this lack of functionality really a thing that others just simply don't notice in a modern Android ecosphere? Is it a forgotten relic of the past?

    (Whatever the case, it presently doesn't work with Octopi Launcher -- and I'm going to keep using it anyway.)

    • A bit late, but maybe you'll see this reply.

      I do use shortcuts, even with Octopi. WhatsApp has shortcuts to chat with specific contacts, and Termux has shortcuts to arbitrary snippets, and I love both. I mentioned the Shazam widget only because it seemed to have the exact same functionality, only lacking the label.

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