Here is the first one.
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"An option to hide icon labels. The shortened labels are ugly, and having the option to remove it would be nice."
done in 1.0.6
"Some Widgets are just on/off switches (ex: button toggles flashlight as a 1x1 widget). For these, can the widget bar just activate the toggle instead of popping up the widget?"
it's doable, but will break the current layout. I'll consider this
"my biggest issue is the delay before I can use the strip (I know it's short, buy still!). Anything to reduce delay would be helpful, including option to turn off animation! ;)"
you could reducing the "Double Click Interval" and disabling "Show Last Widget on Start" in 1.1.0
I'll add an option to turn off animation in future
"please keep cache of apps on memory so don't have to reload when user chooses to add another item"
In 1.1.0, adding application launchers to shortcut panel or the strip is simply drag&drop. All the launchers are cached in Power Strip now.
"please let user specify what item we want to be activated by default. for ex, I want the shortcuts box to be visible when I hit Home regardless of what widget was showing last time Power Strip was active!"
will be done
"would love to have option to have bar of active tasks (see Pre Home which I was trying to replace with your app :) )"
you can always long press the HOME key to get a recent tasks list, which is offered by the Android system
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Again, thank you all for the support :)