Android launchers used to topic—here is why I do not trouble with them anymore

When Android telephones first took off over a decade in the past, customized launchers have been the entire rage. The theory of utterly remodeling your telephone’s appear and feel was once an enormous draw for fanatics—or even non-techies. Lately, on the other hand, launchers are nearly unprecedented. They’ve in large part fallen out of fashion in choose of no matter your telephone got here with, and admittedly, I believe that’s for the simpler.

Customized Android launchers was a large deal

Everybody beloved them

It’s exhausting to explain the hype for customized Android launchers you downloaded off the Play Retailer if you happen to didn’t have an Android telephone again then. Everybody from my mother to my highschool pals (myself integrated) complained without end concerning the terrible inventory TouchWiz Android pores and skin that Samsung used. Different Android manufacturers, like HTC, Motorola, and LG, weren’t significantly better both.

Whilst you couldn’t take away the outside altogether in need of rooting the telephone and flashing a customized ROM, it’s good to a minimum of trade the launcher to make the house display screen and app drawer cleaner, smoother, and, most significantly, extra customizable. That’s necessarily how mythical app launchers like Nova Launcher and GO Launcher made their names.

Excluding utterly remodeling the structure, those launchers added an out of this world selection of options that almost all Android skins didn’t have on the time, like converting the app drawer structure (vertical, horizontal, or tabbed), grid measurement (e.g. 4×4 to 5×5), adjusting app icons, labels, and sizes, hiding particular apps from the drawer, a wide variety of customized gestures and animations, and so a lot more.

That’s simply the top of the iceberg, regardless that; the true attraction launchers added have been the visible overhaul.

You might want to make your telephone glance utterly distinctive via converting all of the UI with a brand new colour scheme, icon packs, animated wallpapers, and extra. Two folks can have the very same telephone and launcher put in, however it could be exhausting to inform as a result of they have been the use of utterly other topics.

In spite of the intensive integrated options and customization, those launchers have been ceaselessly smoother and no more buggy than no matter customized pores and skin got here pre-installed at the telephone. Now, I’m no longer even positive if this speaks to the standard of those launchers or simply how terrible the inventory revel in on some telephones really was once.

Default launchers in any case stuck as much as what customized launchers used to provide

The whole lot is in-built now

Credit score: Bertel King / How-To Geek

Customized Android launchers introduced numerous customization again when few Android telephones had any significant flexibility of their default launchers.

Then again, issues have modified dramatically over time, as producers like Samsung, Motorola, Xiaomi, or even Google with its Pixel line discovered what customers be expecting from their Android telephones. We needed extra customization, and during the last few years, we were given it in spades.

Probably the most high-profile instance is Samsung’s One UI, which utterly remodeled how Samsung telephones appear and feel. The UI went from bloated, heavy, and laggy to scrub, clean, and speedy. It handiest were given higher through the years, with extra options and customization choices added with each and every era.

Many manufacturers, together with Samsung, now will let you obtain customized topics that totally overhaul the device. Not like app launchers of the previous, those topics move well past the house display screen and app drawer and practice throughout all of the UI. You’ll be able to additionally set up customized icon packs, and if you wish to make your Samsung really your personal, you’ll be able to use Theme Park to customise just about each and every element you need.

Despite the fact that you don’t obtain and set up anything else customized, the inventory Android revel in and the little options quite a lot of producers upload on most sensible already supply a wholesome quantity of customization that almost all customers realistically received’t transcend.

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6.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x

If you need an Android telephone with a customizable device, the Samsung Galaxy S26 is an out of this world pick out. It additionally occurs to be some of the highest flagship telephones available on the market.

Customized launchers really feel redundant now

They hardly upload anything else new

Credit score: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek

Whilst some customized launchers may nonetheless technically supply an excellent larger degree of customization than the typical OEM Android pores and skin, these types of options can now be disregarded as gimmicks. Despite the fact that my telephone doesn’t give a boost to customized dice or flip-style animations when swiping between house display screen pages, do I truly care?

The similar is going for different power-user options that launchers upload, corresponding to customized gestures like swiping up in your digicam app to open the gallery or take a photograph, customization of particular person app icons, overkill 12×12 grids for fine-tuning app and widget placement, customized docks obtainable via swiping from the threshold of the display screen, ultra-fine folder group, and so forth.

It’s simple to peer how those complicated options are overkill and will really feel extra like complicated bloat than a real get advantages for the typical person. If a function is in fact helpful, there’s a great opportunity the producer has already added it—or an in depth an identical.

Plus, the way in which we use our telephones is closely app-based, so we handiest spend a fragment of our time at the house display screen anyway.

A launcher provides friction extra ceaselessly than it provides price

Credit score: Lucas Gouveia/Justin Duino/How-To Geek

One factor that has plagued Android launchers from day one is that they generally tend to crash or purpose random problems. Whilst issues have got higher as telephones become extra tough and builders become extra professional at squashing insects, it hasn’t ever utterly disappeared.

Take into account, a launcher has to paintings throughout quite a lot of telephones and on most sensible of a wide variety of person interfaces, and with each and every new device replace, there’s at all times a chance that one thing will damage or forestall operating as meant.

Getting again to the house display screen or opening the app drawer in an unconventional method, like by means of the “Contemporary Apps” display screen, can from time to time purpose you to open the telephone’s inventory launcher as an alternative of your customized one. Unsurprisingly, you can see lawsuits within the critiques segment of just about each and every launcher to be had within the Play Retailer.

Slightly frankly, that roughly conduct is sufficient to stay the general public clear of customized launchers. Having to re-open your launcher when you need your telephone to “simply paintings” is not price any roughly particular function that the launcher guarantees.

Launchers aren’t the most efficient revel in anymore—simply essentially the most a laugh

Customization continues to be what makes Android cool

Whilst the tide has no doubt shifted in choose of OEM Android UIs during the last few years, and also you achieve few sensible benefits from putting in a customized launcher, some customers nonetheless choose to take action. The launchers that have been as soon as fashionable have in large part fallen from grace, however a couple of more moderen names have taken the highlight.

Microsoft Launcher has over 50 million downloads with an outstanding 4.7-star ranking, Niagara Launcher overhauls your telephone into an ultra-minimalist list-based UI, and Sensible Launcher is only a simple, forged selection. So, if you happen to’re feeling nostalgic about customized launchers after studying this piece, perhaps it’s price giving this type of a check out—regardless of standard knowledge suggesting you will have to keep away from them.