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If you're just getting started with the BlackBerry Hub on Android or are a longtime user this guide will help walk you through some of the strongest features and customizations to help you get the most out of your new BlackBerry KEYone smartphone. The finer customizations listed in this overview can be accessed within the BlackBery Hub application settings.

Keyboard Shortcuts

BlackBerry Hub for Android is built to interact directly with the physical keyboard on the BlackBerry KEYone. Here are some of the keyboard shortcuts you can use to maximize your efficiency. Initiate the following actions while in the Hub message list:

  • C = Compose
  • S = Search
  • T= Move to Top
  • B = Move to Bottom
  • N = Next Date Header
  • P = Previous Date Header
  • U = Next Unread Message

Unified Social

Your BlackBerry Hub can support over a dozen different social app integrations. Download and install your favorite social apps like Instagram or Skype and Hub+ Services will prompt you to integrate the account into the Hub. Seamless social! Here are the different accounts that you can add to your BlackBerry Hub.

  1. Twitter
  2. Facebook
  3. Facebook Messenger
  4. LinkedIn
  5. Whatsapp
  6. BBM
  7. Instagram
  8. Pinterest
  9. Slack
  10. Skype
  11. Viber
  12. WeChat
  13. Line
  14. Kik
  15. Telegram
  16. Google Hangouts

Swipe Gesture Actions

Turned on by default swiping left or right on a message within the BlackBerry Hub for Android will invoke a predefined action. For example, swiping to the left will delete the message from your BlackBerry Hub and swiping to the right will snooze the notification. You can do some interesting things with the snooze feature, like getting up a geo-target for snoozed notifications to pop back into the Hub when you make it to the office, connect to your home Wifi and other advanced options you can tweak in the BlackBerry Hub general settings.

Custom Views

If you manage multiple email accounts on one device BlackBerry Hub lets you set up custom views where you can aggregate your accounts down to separate views within the app. If you have 20 accounts installed on the device but for work only need to access four, you could easily setup a "Work" custom view to filter out all the noise so you can stay focused on the email and messages that matter most. You can setup a "Social" view so only Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn notifications can be seen and so forth.

Checkout this handy help and how to for details on setting up a custom view within the BlackBerry Hub.

Pinch Gesture Action

With hundreds of messages hitting your inbox the built in Pinch Gesture is a great way to consolidate down longer lists of email and notifications clutter down to a more organized set. By default, the pinch gesture is set to "Unread" when you pinch on a list within BlackBerry Hub the list will collapse down and show only Unread messages. In the settings you can modify this gesture to show Snooze, Unread, Flagged, High Importance and Muted conversations to tailor the experience to suit your needs.

Hub Widget

BlackBerry added widget support to the BlackBerry Hub on Android giving users additional ways to interact with the Hub. You can effectively pin a large widget to a page on your device and always have the Hub a swipe away or you can utilize the Pop-up widgets built into the BlackBerry Launcher to flick on the BlackBerry Hub icon with three dots below. The three dots indicate the application supports a widget and the widget can be invoked with the flick gesture on the all icon. This functionality is a quick way to peek into applications and check to see if there are new notifications or updates for you to interact with.

Hub Attachments

At the top of the BlackBerry Hub for Android app, there is a paperclip icon that is extremely useful. Tapping this icon loads an "Attachments" view where you get a reverse chronological list of all the recent attachments you've been sent across all integrated email accounts. This is helpful for quickly pulling up collaborative word documents or .PDFs for resharing with colleagues. You can even filter the attachments view down further and organize the list by date, sender, and file name.

Dark Theme

If looking at white screens all day hurts or eyes or if you just prefer the dark visual aesthetic you can jump into your BlackBerry Hub settings and enable Dark Theme. Go Settings > General Settings and under Display there's an option to toggle Dark Theme on and off. Dark Theme will go across the entire Hub experience from the accounts screen to your conversation threads. It's a dark Grey backdrop and text is flipped to White for easier viewing.

*Note: Enabling Dark Theme does not extend to the BlackBerry Hub Widget which will remain at its default white only configuration.

Account Color Organization

You can learn how to add an email to the BlackBerry Hub or get help with merging Exchange ActiveSync with the BlackBerry Hub by hitting the links above. What you'll notice within those breakout guides is a step that includes setting up an account color to your various email accounts. When adding email once you've synced your credentials to the BlackBerry Hub you can also set an account color by tapping on the search at the end of your email setup process. This is handy to give you a visual on message designation for different accounts. You can keep work email on brand or even setup family email to your favorite color. However, you may choose to use this the colors will work on both the light and dark theme Hub display settings.

BlackBerry KEYone

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