Nova Launcher 4.0 w/ Material Design goes stable, packs a few new features

We told you back in March when the first Material-redesigned beta of Nova Launcher came out, but now Kevin Barry, the app launcher’s creator, has officially released the new Nova Launcher on its stable channel…

As he shared on Google+:

Finally a stable release! After 8 months of development, 14 private alphas and 16 public betas, #materinova is finally ready for stable release. With this update, Nova Launcher fully embraces Material Design and Lollipop.

As you may remember from the original beta release, this version packs a lot of features on top of being Lollipop and Material Design-ready. There are brand new functional improvements including previews in settings, better control over desktop icon layout, drawers and folders, a new grouped widget picker, and more. As we noted before, the update packs a new icon, new Nova Action icons, and a new Google Search bar that shows as an overlay.

But this release isn’t just a move of the most recent beta to the stable channel. Kevin says he also packed in a few goodies to make this new version a little more exciting, including “three bundles wallpapers in the wallpaper picker” and a new “Circle App Animation” (which can be found at Nova Settings > Look and Feel > App Animation > Circle).

You can get the stable release of Nova Launcher 4.0 on the Play Store for free.