The Ubuntu smartphone, a new challenger in the mobile ecosystem, won’t be arriving anytime soon. One of its OS features, however, is a side panel that has caught our attention among other parts of the unique touch-based user interface. Luckily for us and other Android users, that side panel can be previewed via an app called Ubuntu Phone Experience.

Hats off to the developers at XDA on this one! They have emulated the side panel as an app that works quite well on just about every Android device. Just as how you’d use it in Ubuntu Phone OS, the side panel functions as a quick apps menu and can be brought into focus by sliding from the left of the screen.

Through it, your favorite apps can be launched anywhere. Customizations include how transparent the sidebar should be and how sensitive it is to user input, so that it does not accidentally open as users go about other stuff in their phones.

The app used to be downloadable via Google Play Store but has since been removed. A functioning download link is posted in the XDA Developers forum, but that method requires enabling installation of apps from unknown sources in the phone settings.