Little Known Jelly Bean Features

Posted by egingell on Jul 9, 2013
Posted in: Android.

Last Updated on Dec 26, 2022

jb-bannerLittle Known Jelly Bean Features

Here are some features in Jelly Bean 4.1.2 and up that I’ve discovered that you may or may not be aware of:

  • Two-finger swipe down on a notification: If it’s expandable it will expand giving you more options. Two-finger swipe up will collapse it.
  • Swip a notification left or right to dismiss it. This does not work on persistent notifications.
  • Long-tap a notification to get a link to “App info” which takes you directly to the app’s info screen where you can uninstall, force-stop, or clear its cache, data, or defaults. Also handy for determining which app put it there.
  • Long-tap the app on the “Recent apps” dialog for the same “App info” link.
  • You can turn off notifications for spammy apps (or any app) from its app info screen. You cannot turn off notifications for some system apps.
  • Long-tap a toggle on the top of the notification pull-down for direct access to that item’s settings screen.
  • Press either volume button to show the volume scale and tap the grey gear to expand it.
  • Tap the grey gear above the toggles on the notification pull-down to access the system settings.
  • Tap the grey clock above the toggles on the notification pull-down to access the world clock.
  • If you have no Search soft-key, you You can long-tap the Menu soft-key to access Search. This only works from the home/launcher screen. May not work in all apps.
  • You can add contacts to the Emergency Dialer by adding them to the “ICE – emergency contacts” contacts group then tap the “+” on the Emergency Dialer. You can add as many contacts as you want to the group; however, you can only add four to the Emergency Dialer at a time (only JB 4.2.2 and up).
  • Easter egg: Jelly Bean Bag. Execute the following from the command line. Root required. This is actually one of the Daydream modes (BeanFlinger) – still cool, though. 
    su -c am start com.android.systemui.BeanBag

Note: I have not confirmed that these features are not available on older Android OS’s, they could very well be.