9 Hidden Android shortcuts that you can get by simply selecting text

The shortcuts are everywhere on Android, and I use them daily to accelerate my workflow. Owners of longtime Android smartphones can be familiar with the shortcuts that appear when the icons have been pressed for a long time or the different scanning gestures available that trigger a variety of other actions. But Android also hides a multitude of other shortcuts in a context menu when selecting the text.

What are these hidden Android shortcuts?

Before running everything on your device, let me first define what I am specifically referring to.

The shortcuts in question appear when a simple text chain is highlighted in any application that supports them. As these shortcuts are linked to the text, not to a link or an icon (including the context and the content of this text), a multitude of shortcut options can trigger. They are perfect for folding copy / monotonous paste tasks and additional menus and go instead to the application I want to open. Admittedly, this shortcut system has flaws, and I will not fail to cover those below, but first, I want to detail the examples that I added to my daily Android repertoire.

For the most part, you will find a default shortcut list through the Android ecosystem, which generally includes Cut,, Copy,, Translate,, Select everythingwith Share And Manage applications Hiding behind the three -point overflow button. These options differ widely according to the devices. They also depend on the applications you have installed and the application that you have selected the text.

Tapping Manage applications Allows you to permanently add applications to the shortcut list. On my Galaxy S24 Fe, this includes Link Checker Urlcheck, the search for an intelligent browser arc and the confidentiality browser Firefox Focus.

As I mentioned, I want to detail some of the specific and special shortcuts that I added to my Android routine. These shortcuts go beyond the list of shortcuts in the standard context menu. Let me explain them below.

I often meet place names and physical addresses on my device. Instead of manually carrying out a Google Maps search, I can select the text and press the Map Shortcut option that appears. This will produce the Open Menu reporting applications support addresses and locations. On my phone, these are in particular navigation applications like Maps.me and Osmand, geographic applications like Peakfinder and transport applications like Uber. Zoom meetings also appear for any reason.

In particular, I find that the Card shortcut option does not trigger reliably when highlighting each name of space, which will become a theme as I progress in this guide. Of course, he recognizes a city, a suburbs, a road name, a country and whole skins, but that does not seem to be triggering on certain benchmarks. “JFK Airport” was an omission that I found particularly confusing.

Confirmation of plans in messaging applications generally involves bouncing around ideas and dates between different users. Once I have confirmed a date with my friends, I can highlight the date chain and press the Add the event shortcut. I want to be clear: chains like “2025/04/07” take care of this shortcut, but the other date formats are delicate.

The first time I tested this, “Lunday April 7” produced the shortcut of the Add event. However, the second attempt to highlight that the text produced a See shortcut instead. Presumably, it is because the date was now in the past – it’s an interesting little detail if it is the case.

Less formal dates, such as “this Saturday”, also triggers See. Tapping This opens the Calendar application on this given date. Interestingly, sentences like “next April” do not trigger any shortcut linked to the date.

I don’t remember when I used my phone for the last time as a phone, but when I meet a number, I can select it to trigger the Call shortcut. It works very well in browsers, but it is not reliable in almost all other applications.

For example, the highlighting of telephone numbers stored in Google Keep does not trigger it (in compromise, keep the hyperlinks of the number). In addition, five -digit SMS numbers used here in South Africa are not recognized as numbers.

Finally! A predictable reliable shortcut. Practically any chain that includes a symbol and a .Domain will produce the E-mail Shorten, even if it is a real address or not. The type will open your favorite messaging client and will define the address as a recipient. It also works on several applications, third -party browsers at Google Keep.

Text in Google applications and definitions

You can easily trigger a Google search from any text selected in Google Apps. This is another incredibly reliable shortcut to trigger.

A good example of this is to select text in the discovery flow. In addition to the research shortcut in the context menu, a shortcut bar also appears at the bottom of the screen. Although you don’t find the shortcut in the Chrome context menu, the bar appears. This is another design oddity, but that does not affect features much.

In addition, the Define The shortcut is among the most frustrating to use. It appears by highlighting a handful of words that seem completely random. The shortcut opens a Google search result for the application of the selected word prefaced by “Define”. In short, it is indeed an extension of the shortcut that I described above, but it is much less reliable.

To underline my point The guardian Run in Google News. However, the selection of “international law” in the same article has not triggered anything. In another article I tested, the shortcut appeared when I highlighted “fossilized” and “dinosaur” but not “paleontologist”.

Fortunately, web links are recognized in a much more consistent way. (Almost) any web address that includes. Domain will trigger an open shortcut option. In particular, the tapping will trigger your default browser, not an open box. In my case, it’s Urlcheck.

Translation appears on practically all selected text channels, and it is very practical. However, the only boring aspect of this shortcut is its dependence on the dictionaries you have installed on your device.

I could translate from English to Spanish because my phone stored this last dictionary (I don’t know why), but it would not be for Afrikaans because it lacked this database. It is strange that this feature does not take advantage of Google Translate to offer online translations.

This is one of my favorite text selection shortcuts, and I use it as often as I cook (which, although often, was probably not enough.) Select a temperature, a distance, a weight or a volume, and a converted shortcut will appear. Press it and conversions in metric and imperial measurements will appear in a box. You can also type Show more To extend the list of options. It is fast, predictable and infinitely useful.

If I had to detail all the textual shortcuts available on Android, we would be here all day, but I want to approach other shortcuts linked to the third -party application which offer their own functionality.

An example that I use is often Annotate And Make a highlighter Options and pockets Emphasize shortcuts. The two allow me to draw attention to a piece of text in an article.

Browsers like Firefox offer Ask The shortcuts, which allow additional research on a particular text chain in another application, such as Firefox Focus, the search for arc or perplexity.

On my Samsung phone, Microsoft also offers a handful of shortcuts. There is an option to record text blocks using Microsoft’s note 365, while Samsung provides a shortcut to Samsung Pass in certain situations.

I love that Android offers these text selection shortcuts, but the functionality seems unfinished, not polite and largely forgotten by Google.

I often have to guess which shortcut will trigger according to the text I select, which makes it much more likely that I will copy / paste information in my application of choice rather than counting on the context menu. Will it be recognized as “lax” as a place? Will he define “squirrel”? Will he realize that this obvious phone number is a phone number? The selection of the text just to discover what will happen goes against the salary objective of the shortcut. It is not intuitive, which discourages its use.

For the most part, I believe that Google can improve the conviviality of the context menu without revolutionizing it. I want the option to reorganize shortcuts as I see, and provide the full extent of the possible options for a given text slice. Admittedly, I do not expect the convert shortcut to appear while highlighting an e-mail address, but I expect the translation option to appear when selecting a French dish or defining to trigger any word.

I would also like Google to offer most of its own products. I would really like to record texts of text to Google continue via a shortcut, for example.

Does this mean that you should not use the shortcuts that are already available? No way. When they work, they are incredibly useful, and I think they will improve the workflow of your smartphone as they have mine.

If there is a text selection shortcut that you often use or especially as what I have not mentioned above, please tell me more in the comments section.