Consider this. You're browsing something on your Twitter client or a news reader and you see a bunch of interesting links and you want to read them. Opening each link in your browser is cumbersome because you'll have to keep shifting focus from one app to another. It's kind of messy. Even if you do open the link, you'll have to wait for the web page to load. So you'd essentially stare at a blank screen or a slowly loading web page for a while before you actually get to read the content on the page. Sounds familiar? I've been in this kind of situation so many times. And given that I have the attention span of a hummingbird, I tend to miss out some articles like this. Well, that's a bummer. If only there was a solution to this. Oh, wait. There is.
Link Bubble is a web browser that collapses a web page into a small bubble and sit on one of the edges of your screen, quietly loading the web page in the background so that you get to continue what you're doing rather than waiting for a web page to load. Here's how it works. Once you install Link Bubble and set it as the default browser, the links you click from any app will create a small bubble on your screen (similar to chat heads of Facebook Messenger that you can drag around from one edge of the screen to the other). The bubble has a progress bar that is a thin line that runs around the outer edge of the bubble and once it completes a full circle it means the web page is loaded and ready for you to view. Nice, huh? So now you don't have to open and close your browser every time you want to open a link, instead you can continue what you were doing and let Link Bubble load all the pages in the background. It also maintains a history of all the links you visited on this app so it's not like a simple throw away browser.
As you can see in the screenshots, you can drag the bubble into the left or right circle at the top. The one on the left can be set as your favorite share item (Pocket, in this case) and the right will be the sharing list like WhatsApp, Twitter, Evernote, etc.
Link Bubble is also very heavy on customization. If you take a peek at the Settings, you can set Default Apps. This is very useful. Say you find a YouTube link in your twitter feed, you wouldn't want to view it in Link Bubble. With default apps set you can directly open such links in the YouTube app, and similarly for links that open in Google Maps, Google Plus, etc. You can also set the list of apps from which you can intercept links. You can set it to auto expand when a bubble has finished loading the web page. You can even enable Incognito mode. There are plenty of other options which are available in the Pro version, like choosing a light/dark theme, enable reading mode, the "OK, Google" voice activation, etc.
If you're the kind who reads lot of web articles either through a social media client or a news reader and wouldn't want to be distracted by constant opening and closing of your web browser, then Link Bubble is perfect for you. I've been using it for quite sometime and it has saved me so much time. "Saved me time, how?", you may ask. Every time you open a web page it takes few seconds to load completely (I'm talking about average-speed mobile data connection and not high-speed WiFi). Making it load in the background Link Bubble is actually saving you some precious seconds. Open the app and you'll see the stats. Mine says it saved me 12 minutes so far. :)
While there is a free version (which allows only one bubble, ugh!) the Pro version is priced at $3.99. But if you want to see what the pro version is actually like, you'd get to enjoy it for 24 hours after you install the app the first time. My only gripe is that there is no option to search through history. You'll have to manually look through the long list of links you've visited. But otherwise, this app is A-okay!
Link Bubble is a web browser that collapses a web page into a small bubble and sit on one of the edges of your screen, quietly loading the web page in the background so that you get to continue what you're doing rather than waiting for a web page to load. Here's how it works. Once you install Link Bubble and set it as the default browser, the links you click from any app will create a small bubble on your screen (similar to chat heads of Facebook Messenger that you can drag around from one edge of the screen to the other). The bubble has a progress bar that is a thin line that runs around the outer edge of the bubble and once it completes a full circle it means the web page is loaded and ready for you to view. Nice, huh? So now you don't have to open and close your browser every time you want to open a link, instead you can continue what you were doing and let Link Bubble load all the pages in the background. It also maintains a history of all the links you visited on this app so it's not like a simple throw away browser.
As you can see in the screenshots, you can drag the bubble into the left or right circle at the top. The one on the left can be set as your favorite share item (Pocket, in this case) and the right will be the sharing list like WhatsApp, Twitter, Evernote, etc.
Link Bubble is also very heavy on customization. If you take a peek at the Settings, you can set Default Apps. This is very useful. Say you find a YouTube link in your twitter feed, you wouldn't want to view it in Link Bubble. With default apps set you can directly open such links in the YouTube app, and similarly for links that open in Google Maps, Google Plus, etc. You can also set the list of apps from which you can intercept links. You can set it to auto expand when a bubble has finished loading the web page. You can even enable Incognito mode. There are plenty of other options which are available in the Pro version, like choosing a light/dark theme, enable reading mode, the "OK, Google" voice activation, etc.
If you're the kind who reads lot of web articles either through a social media client or a news reader and wouldn't want to be distracted by constant opening and closing of your web browser, then Link Bubble is perfect for you. I've been using it for quite sometime and it has saved me so much time. "Saved me time, how?", you may ask. Every time you open a web page it takes few seconds to load completely (I'm talking about average-speed mobile data connection and not high-speed WiFi). Making it load in the background Link Bubble is actually saving you some precious seconds. Open the app and you'll see the stats. Mine says it saved me 12 minutes so far. :)
While there is a free version (which allows only one bubble, ugh!) the Pro version is priced at $3.99. But if you want to see what the pro version is actually like, you'd get to enjoy it for 24 hours after you install the app the first time. My only gripe is that there is no option to search through history. You'll have to manually look through the long list of links you've visited. But otherwise, this app is A-okay!
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