mQuickDo has been at or near the top of my favorite jailbreaks apps list for some time now, and I’ve written about it quite a few times here. It offers a number of features, but the one I use it for is app switching – using its gesture bar to quickly pop up launch buttons for my my five most frequently used apps, from within any app (just about) or even from the Lock Screen.
The app is trying hard to get itself removed from my favorite apps list of late. As I posted on once back in August, it is very temperamental – erratic even in its performance. ‘Erratic how?’ you might ask. Well, in a few ways, but mostly in the simplest of ways – it just stops working every once in a while.
I’ve previously had issues where mQuickDo would randomly switch the position of its gesture bar from bottom of the iPhone screen to top. I tried to adapt to that placement but found it interfered with the essential SBSettings app and just did not work for me there.
Over recent weeks I have not seen that same issue – but instead have just found that around once every 7-10 days the gesture bar just disappears. Without the bar, there is no app switching from within apps – taking away a huge portion of the app’s usefulness for me.
So far I have found no way to correct this issue other than doing a ‘reset to default settings’ from within mQuickDo’s settings app. This is not a good workaround at all, as it means I have to replace my five most used apps and my preferences for which gesture I want to use for app switching. So it’s both annoying and time-consuming when the app breaks down like this.
When I had the first issues with the gesture bar back in August I went to mCleaner Support for help. After trading several emails with them over the course of a few weeks, I got no help or suggested solutions at all. Mostly I got denials that there could possibly be any issue other than user error and statements saying they could not reproduce the issue at all – despite pointing them at my original post about these issues and the comments on it, where four other users reported similar or same problems with the app.
Given that unimpressive response, I have not bothered to report this second, similar issue to them.
For now, I am not getting rid of mQuickDo and I’m putting up with its flakiness – but I am finding that I am tending towards using it a bit less and its rival Kirikae a bit more. When mQuickDo works it is great – but the instability is getting tiresome, and I’m also not a fan of apps that do not get good support. I really hope we’ll see an update to mQuickDo soon that sorts out its stability issues.
If any of you know some better workarounds or cures for mQuickDo’s issues, please share in the comments.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Kirikae.
Gestures are cool, but mQuickDo sounds too intrusive to me for a task switcher. Kirikae gives several options to engage (I prefer press and hold home), and there's a favorites list. And it's not at all buggy (in my experience). All in all, hard to beat for free.
I like Kirikae as well, need to do a post on it at some point. I think this is – literally – one of those areas that is very much different strokes for different folks. When it's working, I much prefer mQuicko's swipe gestures on the screen to having to mess with the home button. But they really do need to make it more stable – I only find it intrusive of late because of its flakiness.
Luckily I haven't experience the mQuickDo issues you have. I don't use much in the app thought, all I really use is the lock screen icons to load my most used apps. I have had it where I press on the phone on my lock screen, it unlocks my iPhone and then just leaves me at springboard and doesn't load the app. Hasn't happened to me too often though to make it annoying. Still enjoying having it on my device and I hope it stays there.
Hope you manage to get round your issues, could it not maybe be something with Winterboard causing the issue? Difficult to troubleshoot if it is intermittent I suppose.
It could be an issue with Winterboard I suppose, I do use Winterboard and the Glasklart theme – but it would be very disappointing if it has any sort of unsolved conflict with such a 'mainstream' (in jailbreak terms) app. It is tough to troubleshoot an intermittent issue, for sure. I would find it much more promising if their support folks seemed to have any interest at all in resolving any of its issues.
I hear you on the support front. Poor support like that is more than enough reason to leave an app. It's unfortunate you have such poblems with mQuickDo, though. Like you said, everybody has their preference. I personally hated leaving the bars up and using them from the bottom. I felt the bar interfered with all sorts of taps and didn't let them get through. Once I moved the bar to the top, turned on 'Triger by StatusBar', turned off 'Bar Switch', and turned OFF 'Above Status Bar', it works seamlessly for me. The gestures never interfere with SBSettings and the bar is more or less hidden behind the status bar so it never interferes with taps or anything else.
Hmmm – I like the sound of how you have it setup, and I'm trying it out – but so far no matter what gesture I assign to it, I get both mQuickDo and SBSettings popping up when i try it. That's no good because SBS stays up when I switch to an app.
Which gestures do you use? I disabled most of the mQuickDo ones. All I use is swipe down. So for SBSettings I swipe to the right, for mQuickDo, I swipe down.
Tried short swipes left and right, and short swipes up and down. Not happening for me at all with your setup. I either get both mQucikDo and SBS popping up every time, or I lose the ability to get to SBS – way, way too irritating. I prefer the bar at the bottom – but I prefer for it to keep working steadily.
Anyway – I like the app enough to keep it for now. If it continues to be this flaky and does not get an update, I'll likely ditch it and just use Kirikae.
In SBSettings, do you have ‘More Sensitive Swipe’ turned on? Try turning that off if you do.
I generally run with that always turned off – and that is when I always get both popping up with whatever swipes I choose. Tried turning it on just for grins – did not help and made it awkward as heck to access SBS.
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