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Nova Launcher gets Material Design refresh and dozens of new features in latest beta

Nova Launcher is one of the best-known and most-praised third-party launchers out there, and today it’s getting a huge Material Design aesthetic refresh and several other new features…

The biggest thing here is obviously the Material Design overhaul. All of the app’s settings screens, dialogs, animations, and more have been given the Material treatment. The app also has a new icon, new Nova Action icons, and the Google Search bar shows as an overlay. There are also several other changes, including a new drawer for widgets, the ability to change page indicator color, and you can pull down in the drawer to open app or widget search.

In this version, specifically 14 Public Beta 1, you’ll find support for Android for Work managed profiles,  unlimited desktop pages (which has been increased from the previous limit of 9), improved bulk editing of folders, new shadows on unread badges, a new Roboto Medium font option, and much more. Be sure to check out the below screenshots of the app’s new design and you’ll find the complete new changelog below.

 

Here’s the absolutely huge change log:

Full Material Design
– All settings screens and dialogs are material style
– More animations
– Google Search from the search bar shows as an overlay
– Edit Shortcut dialog, and quick menu, tinted based on colors of the icon
– New icon
– New Nova Action icons

Rebased on top of Launcher3
Individual icon layout settings (size, font, etc) in Desktop, Drawer, Dock, Folder
Max icon size boosted to 150%
Widget Search
Pull to search (pull down in the drawer to open app or widget search)
Widgets given their own drawer, removed from App Drawer
Ability to change Page Indicator color
Drawer Tab Bar completely optional

Support for Android for Work managed profiles (Lollipop)
Workaround Expand Notifications Nova Action not working on Samsung Lollipop
Requires Android 4.1 or higher (Dropped support for Android 4.0 ICS)

Unlimited desktop pages (previously limited to 9)
Easy add/remove of desktop pages by dropping icons on the blank page, or removing all icons from a page
Add blank desktop pages (for gestures or live wallpapers) from overview
Improved bulk edit of folders (Folder > Menu > Select Apps)
Added shadows to unread badges
Unread Badge size scales with icon size
Allow reordering drawer folders by drag/drop within window
Added Roboto-Medium font option
Improve handling of apps installed to sdcard

These updates will surely be coming to the full version of the app at some point later, but if you want to try the fresh new version today you’ll have to be a member of the Nova Launcher Beta Google+ community. Make your way over to this page on the Play Store to become a beta tester (but that link might not be up quite yet).

You can head over to the Google Play Store to grab Nova Launcher, but it might be a little while before the latest version is available. You can also simply download the APK of the latest beta from TeslaCoil or APKMirror if you’d like. Head over to read Kevin Barry’s post on Google+ for more information.

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.