Looking for a faster way to check in? Swiftsquare may be the answer

UPDATE (4/18): Please ignore the praise I’ve heaped on this app. It appears Swiftsquare doesn’t send your GPS location on to foursquare, which makes you ineligible for the mayorship.

With Explore and lists, the foursquare app is good for lots of things other than just checking in. But those extra features also come at a cost — check-ins are slower and the app takes more time to navigate (and in the iOS version you’ll no doubt inadvertently turn off Radar in the process). For some of the places you check in on a regular basis you just want to check in quickly and get right back to what you were doing.

That’s the whole point behind a new free app for iPhone and Android, Swiftsquare. You add up to 10 of your favorite venues to a list. Checking in is as quick as opening the app, tapping an item on your list of favorites and touching the check in button. If you want to add a shout you can or you can opt to change your Twitter and Facebook sharing preferences from their defaults. The Android app even lets you check in to your favorites from the notification bar.

To make marking your favorites easier, Swiftsquare has a tab that shows your top venues from the past six months so you can pick the ones where you want to check in quickly. There’s also a helpful tab for checking in to nearby venues. If you’re like me and can’t remember which places you’ve added to your favorites list, you don’t have to leave the app and go to the official foursquare app just to check in.

Features like friends, lists, explore, profiles, tips, etc. are missing completely from the app, so it loads very quickly and checks you in even faster. A simple confirmation pop-up is all that you’ll see when your check-in has been completed.

Swiftsquare does indeed make those everyday check-ins like the coffee shop, work or grocery store faster and easier. For those types of check-ins, you typically don’t need all the other “cruft” foursquare provides, so why wait for them all to load?

Give Swiftsquare a try and let us know what you think in the comments.