If you’ve ever found yourself having to flick back and forth between two things on your device, I’ve got a tip for you that should make things a bit easier.
I’ve been doing this quite a lot recently, where I’m trying to buy Christmas presents in a shopping app, but I need to check my present list for everyone, which is kept in my Notes app. So if I need to check the size or colour or some other detail before I order it, I have to keep swapping back and forth between the two.
But thankfully, there are ways to speed up this process on pretty much any device.
On a Windows computer, you can go back to the previous app that you were using by holding down the Alt key on your keyboard, and pressing the Tab key once. The tab key is just above the Caps Lock key – it’ll either say “Tab” on it, or it’ll have two arrows pointing left and right.
On Mac computers, you can do the same thing by holding down the Command key and pressing Tab. On Macs and Windows computers, you can press Tab more than once (while holding down either Alt or Command) to cycle between your open apps, if you have lots of them open at the same time.
On iPads and iPhones, you can use the App Switcher to quickly move between apps. On iPads, you can also swipe sideways on the screen with 4 fingers.
On iPhones and iPads without a Home button, you can swipe right along the bottom edge of the screen (where the Home bar is). If your iPhone has a Home button, then you’ll need to use the App Switcher, by double-tapping the Home button and then tapping on the app you want to switch to.
To do this on Android devices, you can double tap on the Recent Apps button at the bottom of the screen – it’ll be next to the Home button, it usually looks like a square or three vertical lines. Or if you have gesture navigation turned on i.e. if you just have a horizontal bar at the bottom of your screen, swipe from left to right on that bar to go back to the previous app.