[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

Vasastan said:

+1

is this still alive?

me too want to see a hide app/ create folder option in this "almost must have app"
and i notice appsi "die" sometimes when go into landscape mode

pls continue this work.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Hi all, yes, Appsi is still alive. I just had to take a little break for a while. A few days ago I have started working on a completely renewed version of Appsi. I will not say too much yet, but the most important changes will be:
- Material design
- In app purchases instead of separate plugins. This allows much more freedom for each of the pages and better integration between the plugins.
- Performance improvements
- Folder support
- Proper theming engine
- Grid display
- Weather integration

It will be using the same Appsi engine, with a few upgrades of course.
And most importantly, if you purchased a plugin before, it will unlock the matching feature in the new version.

When it is ready for early access testing I will update this thread again. I expect it to be ready for early testing early october.

Appsi is in the top five apps from August 2013. see http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/09/12/roundup-our-top-five-favorite-new-apps-from-august-2013/ for the full story.

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

theCroh said:

Do I need to enable it from somewhere? I'm on the latest beta and for some reason I only get this by long pressing:

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

yes you have to enable it to get the option to launch the apps in floating mode. there is the way:
appsi apps plugin options (you get it by clicking on the three vertical dots in the apps sidebar) --> enable HALO))) contextual action (tick this checkbox)

and you will get a third option to launch apps in floating window..