[APP][2.1+] Appsi sidebar, a plugin supported sidebar application

September 13th
Today I released Appsi 1.5. This release includes the following new features:
1. A new (100% free and a part of Appsi itself) page in the sidebar with support for
- App widgets in the sidebar
- Home plugins (Appsi specific plugins, more below)
- DashClock extensions
2. Full freedom in placing the hotspots and the amount of them.
3. Fast scrolling support
4. More cutomizations and look & feel options
5. Music player controls (with special thanks to xda member Dr.Alexander_Breen for his excellent guide)
.. And a lot more.

September 4th (beta 1.4.21):
It's been a while and I think it is time to give you all a little update on what's going on behind the scenes in beta. I am working on fixing the issues that are left and hope to release the upcoming version as Appsi 1.5 soon.
I have got tons of new cool features coming up. To name a few:
1. A new (100% free and a part of Appsi itself) page in the sidebar with support for
- App widgets in the sidebar
- Home plugins (Appsi specific plugins, more below)
- DashClock extensions
2. Full freedom in placing the hotspots and the amount of them.
3. Fast scrolling support
4. More cutomizations and look & feel options
5. Music player controls (with special thanks to xda member Dr.Alexander_Breen for his excellent guide)
.. And a lot more.

The Home Plugins are small extensions to the home tab/plugin. The are small plugins you can add to the home tab in Appsi. They can be used to show things like, missed calls count, launching certain intents and a lot more. There is an open source sample project with docs on Github. And there's some instructions right here.

If you are looking for screenshots, take a look in the G+ beta community.

July 30th: Version 1.4 released
Last weekend I updated Appsi to version 1.4
New features:
1. Customize the size of the text and icons
2. Change the spacing between the items
3. Global search
4. New icon


July 15th: Version 1.3.3 in beta.
Very small amount of changes for this beta. Moving to production on 18th if no issues arise.
1. Option to minimize the notification. (no icon and smallest possible notification, no extra actions etc)
2. Bug fix for android 4.0.3 and 4.0.4 devices, causing crashed with hardware acceleration enabled.
3. Fix issue with long texts on items in the sidebar when there is a title and a description. The title will now also have ellipsis.

July 13th: Version 1.3 released.
Today I moved version 1.3 from beta to production. The following changes are probably going to make 1.4:
Improved search: Search through all apps, even if the section is disabled. If you have plugins, search will include all results from all plugins.
Live folder support in Appsi (add a live folder as if it is a plugin)

If you have a suggestion, just let me know.
Also I will add new translations once they have been completed. This is just a matter of time. If you would like to help out, pm me.


July 6th: Version 1.3 beta released.

I just finished uploading the new beta version of Appsi to Google play. This new version contains the following new features:
Proper favorites manager
Contextual action bar to perform actions on long press.
Switch plugins by swiping left or right on the sidebar
Updates to all plugins for the contextual actions
Fixes:
Fixed a bug in the icon caching mechanism

This is a beta release, so for now only accessible for beta testers (wanna be a beta tester? let me know). This version will most likely move to production within one week.

July 1st: version 1.2.4 was released

Although it may not sound like a big update, This version adds support for the following new features:
* transparency in the sidebar
* the ability to choose a background image for the sidebar
* Choice between light and dark theme
* Improved the way to get the data from the plugins.
* Improved user experience, especially for new users.

Special thanks go out to all the people helping with translations and beta testing. Thank you very much!

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsimobile.appsi for the Google play listing.

Appsi sidebar is a sidebar application for android. It comes with an embedded App plugin (more about that later) that allows you to see all your apps and add your favorite 5 apps as favorites.
It supports 3 distinct gestures when opening the sidebar, by default they will all open the sidebar normally. The gestures are moving horizontally after touching the hotspot, moving up or moving down. For each of these you can set the action to perform, these actions are:
- open the sidebar (default)
- open favorites swiper
- open recents swiper (needs plugins with recents)
- open plugin swiper (swipe to the plugin you'd like to open and then open the sidebar)
The swiper is the same as what you might know from other apps (like swipepad), it allows you to open something with one single touch, by moving your finger from the sidebar to the item.
The hotpot is either on the left or right side of the screen, it can be positioned manually and can be as big as you want.

Thanks to the wonderful people on this forum Russian translations have been added in the latest version. Also simplified Chinese has been added. I'd like to know what you all think about this app

Appsi is plugin based (and supported). This means it allows you to buy plugins to extend the functionality. This is not needed for normal operation, but it will add more types of things you can add as a sidebar.

You can either add a hotspot for each plugin, or use one hotspot for all plugins. The opened plugin can be changed by tapping the title of the sidebar.

If anyone has suggestions or improvement, either for plugins or Appsi itself, please let me know.

Download link for Appsi 1.5:
Appsi 1.5 release

Hello everybody,

If there are people out here that would like to test the app and provide feedback that would be great. I am open to suggestions and have a list of upcoming features. One of the features I just released as beta is the ability to change the alpha and to set a background for the sidebar. And the ability to be always up to date with the plugins (no need to load the data when the sidebar opens)

So if you'd like to do beta testing, send me your Google account (e-mail address) and I'll add you to the testers list.

If you do not want to test the beta version but would prefer to test the current version, that will also help very much.

Any feedback will help.

Thank you all!

mDroidd said:

If I'm right, this sidebar uses a service as "sidebar", doesn't it?

All other apps I've seen start up an activity if you touch the gesture area. If you press the home button and try to launch an activity from the gesture area, it has a 5 second delay.

So that's a really good thing.

Overall UI looks pretty good, which makes the users first thoughts about the app very positive.

ActionBar in the sidebar is awesome and usefull.
Logo isn't the best I've seen, you could improve that.

This is my opinion 4 seconds after installation.

Edit: search bar is very usefull

Sent from my Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 JB

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Thanks! Yes I know I'll ask try to find someone to do some icon design later on. Will become better. I am focusing on improving the usability right now and other performance improvements. They are all in beta now, and if no more issues are found in these versions, I'll be putting this beta to production.

jlo20431 said:

Really like it thus far! Would it be possible to make it easier to switch between plug ins, I.e, when the sidebar is open instead of going to the top to switch plug ins, maybe you can swipe left and right within in the sidebar to switch between plug ins. It will make it a lot easier to use instead of going to the top.

Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app

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Good suggestion, I will add this to my list.

cyberpunk627 said:

It is mandatory to add an option to dismiss notification from the notification panel... It's way too big, and it is very annoying for me!
App works really well indeed, and I'm looking forward to try a couple of plugins!
Keep up the good work mate!

Galaxy Note II - Alliance Rom

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Thanks, the problem with this is running as a service. Android will kill the app if it needs resources. I have tested it and it will kill it quite often and restart it within a few moments. I can add an option (a discouraged one) to disable running as a foreground service. I can also suggest the user to disable notifications for the app if running on jelly bean, and take them there. Another thought was the ability to set a 100% transparent icon so that it does not show up in the notification bar.

The upcoming version (current beta) adds the following features:
custom backgrounds on the sidebar
light and dark theme (dark theme is the current theme, light is like holo light)
better synchronization between appsi and the plugins. (less data loading needed and better user experience)
Improved getting started experience (visible hotspots until the user disables it and an arrow showing how to open the sidebar once the hotspot is touched)

For the next version (after the current beta), I will add the following features for sure:
Favorites manager: Manage the favorites in a proper way and allow for an unlimited amount of favorites.
Navigating between plugins with a simple swipe.
and possibly:
integration with live folders
widgets plugin (already working on this)

Thank you all, and if you have any more ideas or suggestions, please let me know!

cyberpunk627 said:

May I add something to this already rich and awesome list?
I would REALLY REALLY LIKE to have the possibility to add shortcuts to the apps plugin (as I can do on the launcher screen, for example). That would be really helpful!!
...Maybe also an option to change app icons and names, and a way to hide the "X" for apps removal (which I find quite ugly, this function might be moved to a separate and specific menu to add/remove things maybe?) ?

you may also think about offering an "all plugins package" at a discounted price, rather than having to buy all plugins separately (which, btw, makes the sum of all prices quite high). So that the user can choose if selectively buy the only one or two plugins he needs at their actual price, or directly going for the full thing.. I hope it's clear what I mean!

Cheers and keep up the good work!!
Should you need some beta testers... You know where to look


Galaxy Note II - Alliance Rom

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Yes, the favorites manager will at first be used to replace the current way of adding and removing the favorites. But later on it will also be improved to allow changing names and icons. Also I am planning to do something with icon themes, I still need to determine how and what, but a new theming format is not what I am aiming for (we are talking several releases in the future now)

Shortcuts is definitely on the list of to-dos for the apps plugin. I can't say yet when it will be added but it is something that will definitely be there in the future.

Well beta testers are always very welcome. The XDA Android app testers community is a good starting point, https://plus.google.com/communities/100406373096097711894 . If you join this group and opt-in for beta testing at https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.appsimobile.appsi you'll be able to get the beta version. I still need to add this community to the plugins, I will update my original post with the details when it is done.

jlo20431 said:

Really like it thus far! Would it be possible to make it easier to switch between plug ins, I.e, when the sidebar is open instead of going to the top to switch plug ins, maybe you can swipe left and right within in the sidebar to switch between plug ins. It will make it a lot easier to use instead of going to the top.

Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app

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cyberpunk627 said:

+1 for this feature as well! That would be REALLY GREAT!!

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This feature is included in the beta that was released today. I loved it from the moment it worked. Very good suggestion

Today the beta was moved to production. See the original post at the start of the thread for the changes

New Beta release, for all of you who want the notification icon gone, it is in beta now!

New version released, 1.4 see original post for details