Android, from its very inception, has been well known for its open source and highly customizable nature. With an Android device in your hand, you can make it look and behave exactly the way you desire. Home Screen Customization to the level that Android offers, is by far, way ahead of what other mobile operating systems offer. Launchers on Android let you customise a variety of things ranging from home screen layouts, style of icons and animations to even custom gestures and launch actions. With companies like Windows, Nokia and Yahoo foraying into the launcher space, it’s time we brought you a comparative look at some of the most popular launchers (and even obscure ones) out there.
Google Now Launcher
Google’s own offering is the simplest that a launcher can offer. It’s fast, simple and easy. Sporting a more classic look of an Android launcher with the simple dock and icons home screen and a search bar at the top. Though this launcher has not much to offer when it comes to customizations, it is definitely a treat for the ones who like things plain and simple. What you however can control is few settings such as app drawer suggestions based on the frequently used apps.
What makes this launcher so widely loved is access to Google Now on the left most home screen.
Arrow Launcher by Microsoft
Recently, Microsoft Corporation decided to present their Android fans with a simple and easy to customise launcher. On first glance Arrow’s interface will remind you of the iOS home screen UI with the page full of apps and a frosted background swipe-up settings menu. Arrow launcher customises itself and gives the user one tap access to their recently used apps and settings. The main screen being the apps screen, the other three are people, recent and widgets screens. All of them periodically update depending on your interaction with the phone. So, say if you took a photo 15 minutes ago, the picture will be visible on the ‘recent’ page, along with your recently contacted contacts and recently used apps.
The iOS style swipe-up menu, on the other hand, gives you access to the frequently used settings along with an expanded view of your docks page where you can place the more necessary apps as per your choice. Microsoft also gives users some eye candy with Bing Wallpapers. This launcher definitely looks promising and very well executed.
Z Launcher Beta by Nokia
This launcher by Nokia, still in its beta testing phase. An interesting feature it brings is the ability to scribble. The home screen is a writing pad, so when you draw a letter on the screen, all apps and contacts containing that letter will be displayed on your home screen. What’s more even keywords from your bookmarks and web history can be displayed. Apart from this, the main home page of the launcher displays six of your most frequently used apps that change according to your usage.
Yahoo Aviate Launcher
Aviate has been around for a while now. It adapts itself based on the time of the day, your location and your priorities, presenting to you the right apps and information right when you would need it. In terms of visual customisations, Aviate lets you choose between white, black and transparent themes along with the usual ability to change the icon pack. With Aviate, during your daily commute, the launcher will go into the ‘Moving’ profile or space as they call it, and present to you all the apps that you would generally use while commuting along with providing the traffic updates. Similarly adjustments happen for ‘Home’, ‘Work’ and ‘Listening’ profiles. Strangely, Aviate doesn’t have an ‘app drawer’ icon. What’s special is that when you swipe up from the dock, a small menu displays your favourite and recent contacts giving you the option to contact them just with a few taps.
Nova Launcher
Nova is one of the oldest, most downloaded, highly customizable, performance driven home screen replacements. This launcher by TeslaCoil Software is Android customization at its best. Personalisation abilities that Nova offers are in abundance: don’t like the app dock? You can remove it completely. Don’t like the status bar? You can hide that too! Many of these features are not found on most other launchers.
Special mentions also to the ability to enable unread count badges which display a small notification icon over the app which has pending notifications (and it works for most of them which is rare). With the Nova Launcher, the Android home screen can metaphorically be the canvas of your Android UI dreams.
It’s free to download on the Play Store, but some features such as Gestures, Unread counts, icon swipes, etc. require the Prime version.
Buzz Launcher
Buzz Launcher was awarded the best Brand Identity award by Red Dot. It’s is a highly customisable launcher that works on the concept of sharing of themes designed by users.
‘Homepacks’, as these themes are called, are a new world in themselves. Each home screen layout theme (homepack) is unique. What’s special here is that you don’t have to worry about downloading tons of other icon packs, widgets or wallpapers (like in other cases) to make your Android home screen look beautiful. All you need to do is go to the ‘homepack buzz’ screen which is an online display of the currently downloadable themes and take your pick. These themes are updated regularly adding to the collection of already present 800,000+ themes all of which are free and are very intelligently classified by genres and colours. The application icons, layout, colours, wallpapers and even the fonts come bundled with the ‘homepack’. Not to forget once downloaded you can even play with the contents of the theme according to your taste.
The easier customization options, apart from the themes, that Buzz Launcher offers are: custom icon frames (for all your icons to look similar) and layout settings granular up to even the margins around an app icon and grid sizes. It’s free, and a definite must-have (not just a mere must-try).
SF Launcher 2
Fond of material design? Well with this launcher you can transform your entire UI into cards. The top of your home screen displays the Google Search bar with a beautiful header image as the background in Google Now Style (just like your Google search app). The icons and the widgets are displayed below in a scrollable screen of cards depending on how the user wishes to display them. The App drawer in this launcher opens like your Google Apps options i.e. the regular swipe from the left of your screen covering half of your screen.
The customizable home settings the launcher offers are: ability to choose between various theme colours, lots of Header Images to choose from, header styles and the ability to hide the status bar too. You could even change the icon pack and other settings which get unlocked when your upgrade to the Plus version of the launcher. The app drawer customizations on the other hand include the drawer colour, icon sizes and viewable grids.
A recommendation for all the material design lovers. The launcher gives your home screen a completely new yet familiar look. It also simplifies things to a great extent. The Plus version with more unlocked features comes at a price of Rs.247. That’s asking a lot for the upgrade.
Launch by Quixey Launcher
One of the most recent players in this competitive arena of Android customization, Launch by Quixey, has a lot to offer up-front and yet manages follow the design guidelines of Google Now Launcher.
The magic of this launcher lies in basic gestures. A simple swipe up from the home screen opens the app drawer and the drawer itself feels like an intelligent mix of material design, the marshmallow app drawer and the old jelly bean launcher with customisable tabs.
The unique features offered begin with the left edge swipe menu similar to the Google Application settings menu. Swiping down on the home screen displays a search bar similar to the Google Search bar but, far more useful. It gives you basic options to ‘find food’, ‘read news’, or watch a movie to name a few. Another highlight is Deep View Cards, which open with a swipe towards the right from the main home screen.
The Deep View Cards provide you information from inside installed applications for example you could setup a Google Maps card with food as the keyword and Quixey will keep showing you the nearby food joints wherever you go. Now that’s useful. The basic launcher settings include custom icon packs, gesture customisations, device search options and unread counts. The ‘People’ App that comes with the launcher also adds beauty to your recent contacts view and makes dialling and messaging simple without actually replacing your dialler or messaging app. Again a must try.
TSF Launcher 3D Shell
‘Say goodbye to the boring traditional launcher right now’, states the Google Play store listing of this launcher. If you’re wondering what the developer meant when they emphasised the term 3D shell let us explain: simply put it’s 3D animations. Switching screens, widgets, they all come with 3D animated effects.
You can have an always moving banner on your screen or a dangling set of photos from the calendar widget. Apart from the 3D widgets, other noteworthy customisation options include: icon designer feature, icon themes, custom gestures, interactive app dock, unbelievably realistic screen transition animations, unread counts and a special side menu that auto-hides behind your home screen and contains important user-picked applications.
Another good option if you want a fresh look. Make sure you download and use all their beautiful 3D widgets which make the launcher worthwhile.
If you want the power to customize: Nova Launcher
Right from the basic icon packs, to the more complex home screen animations, and even custom swipe gestures – there is no absolute limit to what this launcher can let you do provided you’re ready to give it time.
If if want to make your phone look completely different: Buzz Launcher
The look and feel changes that each ‘homepack’ has to offer is phenomenal. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that each theme in itself gives you the feel of a completely new launcher and to an extent a completely different phone.
If you prefer first things first: Yahoo Aviate Launcher
The ultra-useful “Today” page of the main home screen beautifully arranges important information such as weather, news and calendar entries right on the home screen along with apps and settings based on time and location.
If you’re not fond of change: Google Now Launcher
Natively the default launcher for Nexus devices, it gives you the perfect blend of minimalistic beauty with the best of stock Android features.