I found an Android app that makes using my phone one-handed so much easier - and it's free

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

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ZDNET cardinal takeaways

• Quick Cursor makes one-handed usage of Android possible.
• If you person mobility oregon dexterity issues, this app is what you need.
• Quick Cursor is free, and a paid pro variation includes much features.

Accessibility is an important diagnostic successful phones. Accessibility issues scope from imaginativeness and proceeding to mobility. Mobility tin beryllium a large contented for some. For respective reasons, you mightiness not person the dexterity oregon scope of question to usage your telephone with 1 manus oregon pat tiny areas. If that sounds similar a concern you regularly face, person I got an app for you.

The Android app successful question is called Quick Cursor: One-Hand Aid. This app (with escaped and paid versions) makes utilizing your telephone with 1 manus (or, much accurately, both) exponentially easier.

Quick Cursor uses a virtual rodent pointer that you power from an country of the show (such arsenic the bottom-left corner). The pointer allows you to interact with immoderate country of the screen. The higher you resistance the Quick Cursor, the larger the reach. Drag the Quick Cursor down, and the scope gets smaller, truthful you tin interact with icons oregon buttons astatine the little information of your display.

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Does this dependable confusing? Once you commencement utilizing Quick Cursor, you rapidly get the bent of it. Regardless of the crushed wherefore you request specified an app, Quick Cursor is the champion enactment connected the market.

The escaped mentation of Quick Cursor gives you everything you request to get started and usage the app. If you privation much features, the Pro mentation (an in-app one-time acquisition of $5.99 oregon $1.99 per year) adds trigger actions, tracker actions, borderline actions, floating tracker, trigger customization, tracker behaviour customization, and more. 

My archetypal steps with Quick Cursor

After installing Quick Cursor (from the Google Play Store), my archetypal content was that the app seemed rather complex. I soon realized my folly was owed to the archetypal wizard, which doesn't precisely bash the champion occupation of explaining however the instrumentality works.

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Let maine simplify the process.

Essentially, you acceptable up a trigger country wherever you telephone up the Quick Cursor. You tin acceptable the trigger presumption on the borderline of the device, anyplace from the apical to the bottom. You tin besides specify the magnitude of the section, specified that it's lone a tiny country of the borderline oregon a overmuch larger area. As you alteration the size successful settings, you're shown an overlay, truthful you cognize precisely what you're doing.

When changing settings connected the trigger, the app provides an denotation (an overlay).

Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET

I would suggest configuring the trigger to unrecorded successful a determination wherever you bash not person app launchers oregon widgets. Otherwise, the diagnostic whitethorn not relation arsenic expected.

You tin besides configure Quick Cursor for representation oregon scenery mode.

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Other customization options see cursor speed, cursor area, alignment (based connected trigger), and region from trigger. I near those successful default, and Cursor worked perfectly for me, but your needs whitethorn vary. In the end, it's champion to play astir with the settings until the trigger works precisely arsenic needed.

Using Quick Cursor

Using Quick Cursor is simple. You swipe inward from your trigger to uncover the cursor. Once the cursor is visible, determination your digit astir until the cursor is supra the constituent you request to interact with (such arsenic a launcher, a button, oregon an code bar), and past tap. You tin adjacent unfastened the Notification Shade and interact with it.

The "handle" is astatine the bottommost right, and the cursor is adjacent the center.

Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET

While the attack is simple, it does instrumentality a spot of getting utilized to. For me, that learning curve lasted astir 60 seconds, and I was disconnected and tapping each implicit my Android display, from wrong a tiny country astatine the bottommost near of the device.

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It's been a portion since I discovered an accessibility app that genuinely does what it sets retired to do, and Quick Cursor does. When I saw it successful enactment for the archetypal time, I was amazed. This app could beryllium incredibly adjuvant for radical with mobility, agility, and different accessibility issues. Or possibly you're conscionable looking for an app that makes one-handed usage of your elephantine telephone imaginable with smaller hands.

Either way, springiness Quick Cursor a try; your fingers volition convey you.