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.
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…
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.
We might have had our first look at Android N late last week, but now it looks like we might already be getting another one. In a tweet from the official Google Maps Twitter account, a Nexus 6P is seemingly shown without an app drawer…
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…
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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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 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 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.
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. AndroidCentral 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.
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.
Facebook’s Home launcher for Android received a minor update this afternoon, simply adding the ability to create folders on the home screen, a feature teased last month. The process is identical to stock Android devices. Simply drag on icon on top of another and a folder will be created.
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