Create Fun Melodies On The Go With Free Rolling Tones for Android

I have absolutely no musical training or background. Give me an instrument, and I’m hopeless. But give me a simple sequencer, and I can make some music. Sequencers are brilliant because they abstract away much of the “hard stuff”: You don’t have to keep a beat, because the sequencer does it for you. You don’t have to try and pick notes that go well together, because they all go well together. If you’re a real musician, you may lament losing all of these nuances and fine-grained elements that combine to make a high-quality composition (in which case, you may want to try one of these music creation tools). But if you’re just looking to have some fun, a good sequencer is all you need. And Rolling Tones for Android is a great one. No, it’s not Holo, and I wouldn’t say it’s a gorgeous app, but it’s well-made, simple to use, and yes — free. It’ll have you making music before you know it.

First Steps

The Rolling Tones Google Play page says the app is based on ToneMatrix, a simple Flash-based music sequencer that we’ve looked at in 2009. Yes, they’re both sequencers, but while ToneMatrix lets you compose single segments, Rolling Tones lets you record entire songs and offers a much more complete experience. I would say GrooveMixer is actually a bit more similar to ToneMatrix than Rolling Tones.

When you first launch Rolling Tones, you’ll see a blank screen with lots of space for your music:

Tap anywhere on the screen, and you’ll make a note. The sequence keeps playing over and over (at 120 beats per minute, by default), so you will soon hear your note. Tap anywhere else on the screen, and you’ve made another note. A beat is formed. Pretty soon, your screen may look like this:

This is a complex sequence that’s actually a part of the demo song that ships with Rolling Tones. The different colors denote different instruments: You can see the eight available instruments lined up along the bottom of the screen.

The matrix itself is easy and intuitive to read: The vertical axis denotes pitch, while the horizontal one marks a note’s position in the sequence. This sounds clunky when explained, but as soon as you start messing around with it, you’ll get it.

From Sequence To Song

One thing I often find frustrating about simple sequencers is that they’re built like toys: You can make a basic sequence, but you can’t make a song. Any sequence you made will just repeat over and over until you change it, but there is often no way to save a sequence and move to the next one, assembling a song. Tone Matrix does let you do this. Let’s look at the relevant bit of the screen a bit closer up:

Ins and Add let you add a new segment to your song; Del lets you remove it. The << and >> buttons let you scroll through your song, and in between you can see the sequence of segments that go to make up the current song (just a five-segment portion of it — the full song can be much longer).

In the next row, the Song button lets you switch between working on the whole song or playing the current segment. Z lets you zoom in on the sequencer matrix for “precision work” — something I’ve found unnecessary on my own device, but may come in handy if you have a smaller screen. The |< and >| buttons let you change the sequence number for the current spot in the song. The Copy and Paste buttons let you quickly take a segment’s contents and paste it into a new segment, while Clear wipes the current segment clean.

This sounds like a lot to take in, but in practice, it’s quite simple. My own workflow goes something like this: I first start messing with a single segment, working up a simple beat I like. I then hit Add three or four times to duplicate the sequence. Then it’s time to change it up, so I hit Copy, hit >| to create a new sequence number in that spot in the song, and hit Paste. I then make one or two changes in the sequence (not too much though, because it still has to sound like it belongs in the same song). I then duplicate that several times, then make another tweak, and so on. Pretty soon, I have a basic melody. It may not be a hit, but it sounds like a song, and it’s fun to make.

Documentation

Rolling Tones is easy to pick up, but it also comes with a simple help page:

This is not obvious, and it does help when you’re trying to figure out what each button does. The included sample song helps, too.

Final Thoughts

Rolling Tones doesn’t win in the looks department, but it definitely has the right functionality, coupled with an intuitive interface and an attractive price tag.

Do you know of a better sequencer for Android that’s still simple enough for non-musicians to use? Let me know in the comments! And if you make anything fun with Rolling Tones, feel free to share a SoundCloud link or two, as well.

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Google Launches Hangouts, A New Cross-Platform IM System for iOS, Android & Web [Updates]

Google I/O has brought a flurry of news from the search giant including the announcement of a new cross-platform messaging service called Hangouts. Integrating with a fresh-looking Google+, the new application for iPhone and Android works seamlessly with the Web version of the messaging app found in Google+ to connect users in real-time.

The platform is billed as a replacement for Google Talk and Voice, allowing one-on-one and group chats via text, along with media messaging and video calling. For the moment the service only works on Apple and Google’s mobile platforms and via a Web browser, either by logging in to Google+ and clicking on Hangouts or by downloading the Chrome extension.

The service is aimed at creating long-standing “conversations that last” according to Google, so chats are always kept up to date across devices, with chat histories stored unless you specify otherwise. That means you’ll have to turn off logging for each and every conversation you want to take off the record, as these logs are always enabled by default.

This launch sees Hangouts detach itself somewhat from Google+, the company’s social layer, though users will still need a Google+ enabled account. The new Hangouts has its own standalone apps and icon, but still relies on Google+ to connect with friends in circles and for use on a desktop PC.

The service joins an already busy marketplace for cross-platform messaging clients, with iOS devices connected for free over iMessage, Facebook chat more useful than ever thanks to “chat heads” and WhatsApp messenger continuing its domination of the SMS-replacements that bridge Android and iOS users.

Download: Google Hangouts for iPhone / Google Hangouts for Android / Google Hangouts for Chrome

Have you used the new service? Do you plan to?

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Google Play For Education Set To Enter Classrooms With A Play Store For Educational Apps [Updates]

Another one of Google’s I/O announcements, Google Play for Education is a new initiative that aims to make it easier for schools to implement mobile learning in classrooms. Google Play for Education is a customized, curated version of the Play Store designed for K-12 needs. Announcing the launch at the I/O event (Google’s annual developer conference), Google said the education-centric Play Store will launch this fall.

Google Play for Education will contain apps organized by subject and grade level, so when looking for a specific app (e.g. a Math app) for a specific grade level, it will be easily discoverable. The apps will come with recommendations from teachers to ensure quality. App purchases by schools will also be streamlined with app purchases charged to a common school credit card which Google will have on its files. The most interesting feature, however, is that the new Play Store will allow schools to simultaneously download the same app to multiple devices —Google’s cloud infrastructure will push the apps across the board and help schools scale up rapidly.

Large scale distribution could enable Google to gain traction in the trending area of educational technology. An it won’t end with Android apps, as Google will surely follow this move up with videos and books as well. With Android devices like Nexus 7 on hand, Google could easily cut into Apple’s pie in the education sector. Could it be a win-win situation for schools that can avail of cheaper teaching aids thanks to Google’s push? This remains to be seen.

What do you think of this new initiative? Will you use it?

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Google Unveils Google Play Music All Access For Unlimited Music Streaming [Updates]

As part of the first day of its Goole I/O tech developer conference this week, Google launched a subscription-based streaming music service calledGoogle Play Music All Access. During the annual event, held in San Francisco, Google’s engineering director for Android, Chris Yerga, announced the new service, which is set to compete against existing music-streaming sites such as Spotify and Rdio.

Even Google’s major competitor, Apple, which still doesn’t have a streaming music service, may see its iTunes market share challenged by All Access. All Access is part of the Google Play platform which allows users to browse and purchase music, magazines, books, movies, television programs, and applications published through Google.

All Access costs $9.99 per month, with a 30-day free trial, but customers signing up before June 30th will pay a reduced monthly fee of $7.99. All Access provides unlimited access to Google’s entire online streaming music library, which is based on licensing agreements with music companies such as Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment.

The subscription service can be used through the Google Play Web client and on Android devices. Subscribers can also add songs from the library to their devices for offline access. In addition, the monthly subscription includes a custom radio feature based on the songs, artists, and albums you select. All songs can be managed in playlists, purchased for download, and shared on Google+.

Included in the service for both subscribers and non-subscribers, is free access to the Google Play music storage locker which lets you upload up to 20,000 of your own songs and albums from your computer using the cross-platform Google Play Music Manager. The manager scans your iTunes library and any music folder on your computer and matches it with the same songs from the Google Play library. Copies of your songs not found in the Google library will be uploaded to your account.

All Access is currently US only, but if successful, might expand to other parts of the world in the future.

So what do you think of Google new music streaming service? Will you try it out or switch from your existing online music subscription?

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What Are the Best Stock Apps for Daily Use On Android?

Once you’ve built up a substantial financial buffer, you may be considering to invest some of that money. One of the most popular and possibly most profitable way to make money off of your investments is to buy and sell stocks. As a company becomes more successful, its stocks increase in value, which you can sell for a major profit. However, if the company does poorly, the stocks lose value and make your investment a failure. The value of the stocks can change rapidly, so it’s absolutely necessary to use the best tools to keep track of the stocks you own.

Google Finance

Sometimes, you may not want to use a full featured Android stock app in order to keep track of stock values, but rather a simpler go-to app that gives you sufficient information. This go-to app would have to be Google Finance. It allows you to look for whichever stock you want to follow, no matter which stock exchange it’s located in, and track its current trading price. You can also look up history graphs of the stock’s value, as well as online news concerning the stock which can include statements from financial analysts. Despite the fact that the app was developed by Google, it doesn’t look like they took a lot of time to develop the app, as much of the information it pulls ends up being separate pages rather than loading information into the app’s own user interface. However, it definitely suffices for a quick check on your stocks.

Stock Quote

If you’d rather not use a tool from Google to track stocks, you can also use an app calledStock Quote. This app does a very similar job to Google Finance, but it presents the information in a very different user interface (that some users may find more “rough around the edges” than Google Finance). After launching the app, you’ll immediately be shown stock exchange indexes as well as stocks that you are following — both are completely open for customization. You can also search other stocks without adding them by typing in their symbol and tapping on Quote. In there, you’ll be presented with lots of useful information as well as buttons that can lead you to more information, news, and charts. Either app should help you to satisfactorily follow your stocks and notice any important changes to them.

Stock Watcher

The above two are useful Android stock apps, but enjoying a great user interface can make or break your experience with an app. If you want to follow your stocks with a friendly user interface, then Stock Watcher may be the best app for you. While this app allows you to search for any stock you’d like to follow and access a handful of useful information about the stock including charts, you can also switch between portfolios, and access indices as well as “market movers”. The market movers feature is especially important because it highlights well-performing stocks that you may want to look into. Therefore, the app does offer some guidance on what may be good to invest in, but please remember that you will have to make your own well-educated decisions.

Stock Market Simulator

These three apps are great for giving you the information that you need to determine how well a stock is performing, but all of that information doesn’t help much if you don’t know what it actually means or if you don’t feel comfortable enough to actually buy or sell some stock based on the information you have. The best way to practice and learn, in my opinion, is through a simulator, and that’s what Stock Market Simulator is all about. In this simulator, you start out with $10,000 and are able to “buy” US stock. The app still uses real-world numbers to determine whether you make or lose money, so the simulator itself is completely accurate. However, since it’s a stock simulator, it is meant to be educational and not a tool that makes decisions for you. As far as games go, this one certainly isn’t the most interesting one you can play as your stocks change as slowly or quickly as the real stocks do, but it’s a great way to dive into the stock market without actually losing money. If you’d like a simulator for your computer, you can also try the UpDown Online Stock Market Trading Simulator.

Conclusion

These four Android stock apps should help you to learn about stocks and the entire market, or to simply follow stocks that you’re interested in with plenty of information. Again, please only view these apps as informative because stock markets are extremely volatile — even the best analysts can be wrong occasionally. The stock market is an opportunity to make lots of money, but it’s also an opportunity to lose a lot of it as well.

What are your favorite apps to follow the stock market? Do you invest in the stock market regularly? Let us know in the comments!

For more great Android apps, check out our list of the Best Android Apps, and to get the most out of your Android device, check out our Android guide.

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The Clean Droid: How To Bulk Uninstall Android Apps You Don’t Use

If you’re like me, there’s a good chance you install lots of Android apps to try them out. From the latest popular mobile games to new and potentially useful utilities, these apps build up over time. They eventually begin to clutter your app drawer with icons you never tap and fill your storage with app data you’ll never use. Removing these apps normally requires initiating an uninstall operation for every app, tapping a button, waiting for the app to fully uninstall, and then repeating — this can get tedious and may take a while, particularly if you have a slower phone. Luckily, there’s a faster way to uninstall multiple apps at once.

To do this, you’ll need the popular Titanium Backup. You don’t need the paid version, the free version will do — but you do need to have a rooted device to do this. If you’re not rooted, we have another app that will dramatically speed up your app-uninstalling process anyway.

Use Titanium Backup to Batch Uninstall Apps

Titanium Backup has a way to uninstall multiple Android apps at once — no tapping a confirmation dialog over and over — but it’s well-hidden in Titanium Backup’s confusing interface.

To do this, you’ll need to be using a rooted device. If you are, you can install the freeTitanium Backup app from Google Play — the paid, pro version isn’t necessary.

Launch Titanium Backup and grant it root privileges. Once you have, tap the Menu button in its interface.

On the menu screen, locate the General category and tap Batch actions under it. This screen contains a wide variety of actions you can perform on multiple apps at once — everything from backing them up to restoring them, freezing them, and clearing their caches.

Scroll down to the Un-install section on the Batch actions screen and tap the Run button to the left of Un-install all user apps.

Don’t worry — this won’t automatically uninstall all your apps. The option is just confusingly named.

You’ll now see a list of all your installed users apps (this doesn’t include system apps). All of the apps you’ve installed are selected by default. if you want to get rid of them all, great — you can have a completely default device and start over from scratch.

You probably don’t want to do that, so tap the Deselect all button to uncheck all the apps.

Scroll through the list and select all the apps you’ve like to uninstall by selecting their checkboxes. When you’re done, tap the green checkmark button at the top-right corner of the app to uninstall all the apps you’ve selected.

Titanium Backup will now automatically uninstall all the apps you’ve selected without any additional confirmation. It uses its root access to do this — apps can’t normally do this sort of thing because of Android’s security model.

Batch Uninstall Apps Without Root

If you don’t have a rooted Android smartphone or tablet, this isn’t as easy. You can’t actually skip the confirmation messages without root access.

However, you can still speed things up. To more quickly uninstall apps if you’re not rooted, use the Easy Uninstaller app. It will display a list of your installed apps and allow you to check off individual apps you want to uninstall. The apps are sorted by their size, so you can see which apps you should uninstall to regain the most storage space.

Select the apps you want to uninstall and then tap the Batch Uninstall button. Easy Uninstaller will pop up a confirmation box for each app you want to uninstall. You’ll still have to tap OK to each confirmation box, but this is much faster than uninstalling multiple apps the normal way — no additional screens and waiting.

Of course, if you’re a real pro, you could use the adb utility to uninstall multiple apps after connecting your Android device to your computer and enabling USB debugging. The exact command you’ll need is “adb uninstall.” This method isn’t for casual users, but it wouldn’t require root and could be useful if you wanted to batch uninstall apps from multiple phones — you’d just have to run the same command after plugging in each individual phone.

If you’re looking to free up more storage space on our phone, be sure to check out our guide to freeing storage space on your Android device.

Do you have any other tips for quickly installing multiple Android apps without the confirmation screens and annoying delays? Leave a comment below and share them!

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Blackberry Announces Summer Release Of BlackBerry Messenger For iPhone & Android [Updates]

BlackBerry announced on Monday at its 2013 BlackBerry Live keynote address that it will finally be releasing it Blackberry Messenger (BBM) for iPhone and Android over the summer.

Up until now, the popular BBM service has been exclusively available only on BlackBerry-branded phones. The existing app allows users to bypass calling, text-message and data charges by communicating using text, photos, videos, and voice on WiFi, similar to other popular apps such as iMessage and WhatsApp. By offering this app as a cross-platform service, users of almost all types of smartphones will be able to seamlessly communicate with each other.

“We’re committed to making the BBM experience on other platforms as fully featured as we can,” said BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. “We’ll start with messaging and groups, but we’ll add voice and screen share later on. … BB10 is such a strong platform that we are confident it can become an independent messaging solution.”

With that said, the app will only allow for messaging functions for iPhone and Android. Heins has obviously alluded to potential updates, but since the app is targeted at the current iOS 6 and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), it’s possible that the company is going to wait for phone OS upgrades.

Some say that Blackberry is behind the curve when it comes to this release. Other WiFi-oriented messaging apps exist, and services like Viber already allow for VoIP calls. However, it’s possible that the name “Blackberry” alone will reel in users.

Will you use BlackBerry Messenger for your iPhone or Android smartphone? Do you think the company was late to the game?

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n7player: An Android Music Player That’s Worth Every Cent

There are plenty of high quality Android music players without paying a single cent. In fact, just a few weeks ago I wrote about Rocket Player, which is currently my favorite free music player available. But, you know, sometimes you have to pay a bit of cash in order to get something truly extraordinary – like n7player.

Prior to writing this article, I’d never heard ofn7player. MakeUseOf reader, Nevzat, recommended it to me and, to my great pleasure, it surpassed all of my expectations. I’m the kind of guy who will put up with good-but-not-great free apps, but n7player has entered into my list of paid apps that I think are worth the purchase.

When you first open up n7player, the app lets you know immediately that this is a free trial version of a paid app. It’s not the first app to do this sort of thing but I find it tactful and considerate so I can close it and uninstall it right away if I don’t intend to spend any money. Thankfully for me, I stuck with it because the n7player Android music player is awesome.

As you tap the Next button, n7player takes you on an introductory tour of five slides that explains how to use the app to its fullest potential. Having to learn a new app’s interface – even if it’s something as generic as a music player – can be frustrating, so mini-tutorials like this are always great.

And at the end of the tour, n7player offers to search and download album art for all of the songs/albums that are currently on your device. Personally, I don’t really care about album art too much, but the option was so convenient that I went with it anyway.

n7player is a local music player that’s made up of all of the songs on your Android device. But unlike most music players, the interface uses a tag cloud layout instead of the traditional list after list after list. What does this mean? Yes, the artists are ordered alphabetically, but the size of their names is proportional to how many songs you have for that artist.

The music library also implements a pinch-and-zoom feature that causes the tag cloud interface to change into an album grid if you zoom in close enough. The grid view is nice but it’s really only useful if you can identify albums at a glance – a skill that I haven’t fully developed since I rarely bother with album art.

I love the way that n7player handles the actual music playback interface. Other Android music players have utilized drawer-based players in the past, but n7player is the first music app where I’ve felt that there is a high quality mixture of performance, aesthetics, and practicality.

First of all, the design of it all looks modern. The icons and buttons share a sort of minimalism that alleviates much of the potential for clutter. There’s just enough three-dimensionality to it so that it doesn’t fall flat but not so much that it becomes an eyesore. n7player’s interface is the best one I’ve seen yet.

n7player comes with a built-in equalizer that works exceptionally well. There are a dozen different presets that each produce a unique sound and you can even create some of your own presets if you’d like.

As for options and customization, n7player offers just enough settings so that I don’t feel like I’m stuck with an out-of-the-box setup and no means of personalization. However, most of the customization options are simple toggles, so there’s no real way to change themes, fonts, layouts, etc. Not a big deal to me but just something to keep in mind.

Other features that may entice you to give this bad boy a try:

• Built-in tag editor so you can organize your library with ease.
• Search your library and file system for songs.
• Lock screen interface with direct unlock support.
• Sleep timer that will automatically close n7player after a set period.
• Last.FM scrobbling.

I mentioned before that this was a free trial for the paid version of n7player. The free trial lasts 14 days from the time of installation and the full version costs $3.49 USD. There is a separate version of this android music player called n7player 1.0 that is fully free but hasn’t been updated since December 2012. Feel free to check that out if you don’t want to pay.

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Evernote Food: A Beautiful Way to Keep Track Of Your Favorite Meals, Recipes, and Restaurants [Android]

What’d you have for breakfast this morning? How about two weeks ago? And hey, remember that time you and your friends went to that really fancy Japanese restaurant? If you’re a bit fuzzy on the last two questions (or even on the first), Evernote Foodis a great way to answer them. I covered Evernote Food for Android before, when all it could do was log your meals. Now it’s time to give it another look, thanks to an all-new version that adds fun ways to track down new recipes and restaurants, as well as a fresh new look.

We’re big fans of Evernote here at MakeUseOf: We’ve previously shown you why you should be using it to remember everything, five uses for its desktop clients, as well as ten unique uses for Evernote itself. But even if you’re not so big on the core Evernote service, Evernote Food can be used on its own, and you don’t even have to have Evernote installed on your device.

Getting Started and Exploring Recipes

Evernote Food does a good job laying out its main features as you launch it:

Right off the bat, two things become obvious: It’s a beautiful app, and it lets you work with recipes, restaurants, and meals. Let’s dig into the Explore Recipes screen:

This mouth-watering screen pulls in recipes from a selection of food blogs (preconfigured with Evernote Food — those are some lucky food bloggers). The “huge thumbnail” aesthetic shown here carries through the rest of the app, as you will see later in the meal log. Tapping into a recipe, however, yields a disappointing result:

Evernote Food simply serves up the original website, making no attempt to summarize it or even apply a phone-friendly layout (like Pocket does so well). Reading the recipe off a phone screen will involve lots of zooming and panning, and is really not that great of an experience. Zoomed in, the text becomes a scosh more readable, at the expense of cropped graphics:

Tiny indeed. So yes, you can find new recipes using Evernote Food, but you’d be better off reading them off a tablet or a computer monitor. Fortunately, this is easy to do, because Evernote Food lets you clip those recipes to your own cookbook. Tap the familiar elephant icon in the top-right corner, and Evernote Food shows the clipping screen:

By clipping the recipe, you will be able to access it from any other Evernote client (not just Evernote Food).

Finding and Clipping Restaurants

Evernote Food also includes a new screen for searching and clipping restaurants you’d like to eat in. Powered by Foursquare, you can use the feature both for searching nearby restaurants, and to prepare for an upcoming trip. Here’s a search for restaurants around London:

An individual restaurant’s screen looks like this:

It has pretty much everything you’d expect: The name, a Foursquare rating, a map and an address, a phone number, and sometimes even a few tiny images (which cannot be resized). Notably missing are reviews, but that’s understandable: Evernote is very much an individual experience, and by including crowdsourced social reviews the company would risk muddling its focus. Still, this limits the restaurant’s screen usefulness: If you’re serious about finding some good eating, you may have to use Evernote Food in combination with a tool like Urbanspoon or one of these other helpful apps for deciding where to eat.

The Heart of The App: Logging Meals

New features notwithstanding, Evernote Food’s raison d’être is logging meals. Whether you enjoy logging only special meals with friends or, like me, you use it as a diet log to record all of your meals, Evernote’s meal logging feature is the most mature part of the app, and remains pleasantly polished in this new release. This is what an individual meal looks like:

You get plenty of fields to fill in, as well as automatic location tagging (which you can toggle off if you wish). New to this version, you can now pull down a gripper below the image to reveal a full-size photo:

Evernote’s meal browser uses the same layout as the recipe browser, and the wide, generous thumbnails are just as effective:

These are all photos I took with my own phone during routine use, and I can’t help but admire how nice Evernote Food makes my food look. Yes, I like chocolate — who doesn’t, really?

Making The Most Of Your Free Space Quota

I’d like to end off with one important trick. As a free Evernote user, you get a monthly storage quota of 60MB. If you use Evernote Food several times every day, this can fill up very quickly: A full-resolution 8MP image can easily take over half a megabyte. Fortunately, Evernote Food lets you pick what resolution you want the built-in camera to use:

If you go to the Settings screen and then pick Image Options, you’ll be able to set Image Size to Small (640×640). This is a completely adequate resolution for documenting your meals, and even for sharing particularly nice photos. If you intend to print photos of your food you might want to go for a higher resolution — but for most other use cases, 640×640 would be plenty. And photos at this resolution take up just a fraction of the space they’d otherwise take, stretching your 60MB monthly quota that much farther (in about a year of using Evernote Food, I have yet to hit my monthly quota even once).

Is Newer Always Better?

I can’t say I love all of the new additions in this version of Evernote Food. The new features are of limited use: One lets you browse recipes but doesn’t make it easy to actually read them, while the other lets you browse restaurants but doesn’t include diner reviews.  So, in the feature department, I’d have to say Evernote Food now suffers from a bit of bloat.

On the plus side, the new look works very well, and Evernote Food is a pleasure to use and browse. It remains my food log of choice on Android.

Do you log your meals? Do you use Evernote Food, or another app? Let me know below.

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Two People, One Tablet: What Are Your Options? [Android]

Tablets running Android 4.2 support multiple user accounts. User accounts work just like they do on a PC — each account has its own apps, settings, and other data. If you share your tablet with another person, you can use user accounts to allow each person to have their own environment — including the launcher setup, Google account sync, and other settings. This helps give each of you more privacy when you’re using your tablet, and also allows each of you to log in with your own Google account and see only your own email and other data.

This feature is easy to set up if you have an Android 4.2 device. It’s a useful feature not found in Apple’s competing iPad, making it easy to leave a tablet lying around and share it with your significant other, children, or anyone else. Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets also have multiple user accounts — Apple’s iPad is the only device that hasn’t caught up.

Note that Android 4.2 does not offer multiple user accounts on smartphones, only on tablets.

Creating Multiple User Accounts on Android 4.2

To get started, open the Settings screen on your Android tablet and tap the Users option under the Device category. If you don’t see this option, your device isn’t running Android 4.2 or above.

Tap the Add User button at the top of the screen to create a new account.

Note that the first user you already set up on the tablet is considered the “owner.” They have the ability to delete any user’s space from the tablet, while other users can only delete their own spaces.

You’ll see an informational message about user accounts. If the other person who will use the account is nearby, you can hand them the tablet and they can begin the setup process by entering their Google account and other information. They’ll go through a setup process just as they would when setting up a new Android tablet. If the other person isn’t nearby, you can leave the user account alone and they’ll be able to go through the set up process the first time they log in.

Using Multiple User Accounts

Once you have multiple user accounts enabled, you can switch between them by tapping the icons at the bottom of Android’s lock screen. if the user has a PIN or password set, they’ll need it to log into their account — this prevents unauthorized people from accessing the user’s account.

To “log out,” simply lock the tablet’s screen or allow it to time out as normal — from the lock screen, other people can switch to their user account and sign in.

Only three users can be “active” at a time. Active user accounts will sync in the background, so every user’s email and other data will always be ready when they go to use the device. If you have four accounts, the least recently used user will be considered “inactive” — the three accounts used most recently will be considered active accounts and will sync.

You can manage user accounts — changing icons, renaming them, deleting accounts, and creating new accounts — from the Users screen in Settings. You can also set an “owner info” message that will appear on the lock screen from here.

But I Don’t Have Android 4.2!

Let’s say you have a tablet running Android 4.1 or older and you really want multiple user accounts. You have some options, but they’ll all probably cause you problems.

• Android 4.1 contains a hidden multi-user feature that can be enabled with root access. However, we don’t recommend this — Google has said the feature was disabled for a reason in Android 4.1 and it will likely cause problems if you enable and use it. It’s an unfinished feature in Android 4.1.
• SwitchMe is an app that purports to add multiple user accounts to any device running Android 2.1 or later. Your tablet will need to be rooted to do this. The app has mixed reviews. Let’s be honest — this app is a dirty hack over Android and will likely cause you problems. The experience is not as smooth, and reviews indicate that you’ll have to reboot each time you change user profiles.

We don’t recommend using any of the above tricks. If your tablet is still running Android 4.1 or older, you may want to try looking for an installing a community-developed custom ROM (likeCyanogenmod) that will bring Android 4.2 to your device and give you multiple user accounts without any dirty hacks.

Do you use multiple user accounts on your Android tablet? Do you have any other tips and tricks to recommend? leave a comment below and let us know!

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