A few weeks ago, Canonical released the first look of Ubuntu for phones, and soon after released developer preview builds for the Nexus devices from Google. While the OS in itself is not yet ready for consumers, the preview build does show off the interesting gesture based UI that Canonical has come up with.

One of the highlights of Ubuntu for phones is the app launcher that comes up with a simple swipe from the left edge of the screen, allowing you to quickly launch an app from anywhere in the OS. A relatively new app in the Play Store – Glovebox (free) – aims to bring similar functionality to all Android devices out there. Here’s how to set it up.

1. Fire up Glovebox to customise it and add all the apps you want quick access to. Swipe to the right or just tap on the back button on the top-left from the introductory screen to access all the customization options. To enable Glovebox, make sure the toggle switch on the top right is in On mode.

2. To add apps to Glovebox, select the Bar List option and then tap the Add button in the bottom to start adding apps to it. You can even add direct Shortcut(s) and Widget to a GMail label, Dropbox folder, Bookmark, a Contact and much more.

3. You can assign the start and end margins of the swipe area that will bring up Glovebox from the Configuration menu. This option can come in helpful if you continuously find yourself bringing up Glovebox instead of swiping to the left or right in an application. To increase or decrease the width of the swipe area, increase or decrease the Sensibility level slider.

By default, Glovebox shows a persistent notification in your notification bar that prevents the app from being killed by the Android OS memory manager and running it in the background. You can turn off this notification from the Configuration sub-menu if your Android device has plenty of free RAM available.

Glovebox also supports themes to customise its looks. The paid version of the app ($3.99) gives you access to many new features such as the ability to assign more than 8 shortcuts to the launcher and quick access to widgets.