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Google wants to help pick the best launcher, icon pack, and wallpaper for your tastes

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One of the best aspects of Android is the ability to customize it to suit your needs and preferences. With different keyboards, homescreens, icon packs, wallpapers, lock screens, and much more, there’s no limit to what you can do to make your device stand out from the crowd. Now, Google is launching a new tool on the web that can help make customizing your device a little easier.


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Android Basics: How to install and switch between third-party launchers

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Launcher Tutorial

One of the most-used customization features in Android is the ability to change your device’s launcher. This allows you to customize the look and feel of your home screen, app icons, as well as functionality of the app drawer and folders on your device. This comes especially in handy when you don’t like your device’s customized skin — like TouchWiz on Samsung devices or EMUI on Huawei devices…


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After years of inactivity, ADW Launcher 2.0 is here and it’s pretty great

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There are dozens of great launchers for Android, however going back in time a few years, our choices were a bit different. One of the biggest players, and likely one many of us remember fondly, was ADW Launcher. It had tons of great features, but above all else it was fast, fun, and powerful. However that was a long time ago. ADW hasn’t seen an update since mid-2013, but now it’s back with a new design and some great new features.


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Opinion: Ditching the app drawer with Android N would be a terrible idea

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One of the main reasons why so many people love Android is its famous customisability. Google’s OS is notoriously flexible, and despite being already available in a variety of different forms thanks to the OEMs’ re-skinning, the hundreds of apps present on the Play Store allow for further personalization in almost every corner of the system. Toggles, widgets, icon packs and entire lock screen replacements are just a few of the categories of things Android can be user-modified with.

However, particularly after Material Design‘s introduction and a general push towards cohesiveness and consistency across the system, the diverse adaptations of the OS have started to look more and more similar; be it thanks to whiter, more card-based menus, the use of similar toggle icons or the widely adopted carousel-like task switcher, among others, Android has finally started to look and feel instantly recognizable, even when buried deep underneath the oft-poor design decisions made by third parties…


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Nova Launcher’s ‘normalize icons’ feature comes to the public build in version 4.1.0

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We told you about Nova Launcher’s new icon normalization features when they came to the beta build of the app a couple of weeks ago. If you’re not a fan of running potentially buggy beta software on your daily driver, though, you might be glad to hear that this feature — along with plenty of others in the latest version — has now made it to the public build in version 4.1.0…
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Many Google Now Launcher users now receiving Marshmallow-style app drawer

Quick tour of new features in Android 'M' developer preview 2 - YouTube 2015-09-25 12-52-20

Although Google isn’t yet rolling out Android Marshmallow to the masses (it’s currently rumored that the rollout will begin on October 5th), many users are this morning waking up to an automatically-updated Google Now Launcher, sporting a design that might be familiar to those who have taken a look at the Android M developer preview
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Google launches Android TV Launcher on the Play Store

Android TV Launcher - Android Apps on Google Play 2014-12-18 12-45-29

Google has now listed the Android TV Launcher on the Play Store, providing a much more efficient way for the Mountain View company to update the main interface of any device running the TV flavor of Android. It’s worth noting that this isn’t an Android app for your phone, but rather an official listing of the Android TV Launcher (much like the Google Now Launcher, for instance) on the Play Store.

Android TV Launcher is the jumping-off point for starting all activities on your Android TV entertainment device. The Launcher is optimized to put content at the center; from casual movie-watching, to edge-of-seat, immersive gameplay. It’s all about finding and enjoying content with the least amount of friction and providing quick access to all the features Android TV has to offer.

In this version, there’s apparently a slew of bug fixes to be had. Since this app only works with Android TV devices, you’re currently restricted to the Nexus Player and the ADT-1 developer kit. That means that, sadly, this isn’t going to work on any of Google’s older Google TV devices and most definitely isn’t going to be of any use for Chromecast owners.

You can get the Android TV Launcher on the Play Store.

Action Launcher 3 is out with Quicktheme, app Covers, Shutters, and more

2014-12-11 15_37_53-Action Launcher 3 - Quicktheme, Shutters, Covers and more! - YouTube

Action Launcher has always been one of the better known launchers to hit the Play Store, and today, Android developer Chris Lacy has released an updated version of the app with a bunch of new features that takes everything that was already great about the app and brings it up to date for Android 5.0 Lollipop. But this update isn’t just an iterative Material Design update; it packs a bunch of great completely new features as well.


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Google Now Launcher now available for all Android 4.1+ devices

Update: Google says Now Launcher is available for all Android 4.1+ devices:

[tweet https://twitter.com/Android/status/495293118036447233]

It looks like the Google Now Launcher might soon be available on a long list of new devices as a small update to the app brings reports of expanded compatibility for a number of notable Android phones. Google-Now-Launcher-01AndroidCentral points us to users seeing compatibility with devices including the LG G3, Verizon’s Galaxy S5, the HTC One M8, One E8, One Mini 2, Desire 816, and the Huawei Ascend P7.

The expanded compatibility isn’t officially included in the release notes nor has Google officially made an announcement, but we expect to hear more shortly. The Google Now launcher, which was previously only available for Nexus and Google Play Edition devices, adds Google Now to the home screen for a more integrated experience with the OS.

The Google Now Launcher is available on Google Play here.

Yahoo Aviate Launcher now available for Android

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Yahoo-Aviate

Following its recent acquisition of Aviate, Yahoo has relaunched the company’s home screen replacement software today. Rebranded as Yahoo Aviate Launcher, the app is now out of beta and introduces some new features like Favorite People, which automatically places your most popular contacts into a list of favorites for fast access. To place a call or send a text, simply swipe upward from your device’s home screen.


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