One
of the best things about Android is being able to customize everything
about your home screen, which you can do with a third-party application
launcher. Android has plenty of great ones, but our favorite is Nova
Launcher, which strikes a great perfect balance between incredible
performance and high customizability without getting too gimmicky and
difficult to use.
Update: Our previous pick for the App Directory was LauncherPro,
which we still think is good if you're stuck with a Gingerbread phone
or really like its features. We've renamed that post to be the best
android launcher for pre-4.0 devices.
Nova Launcher
Features
- Smooth scrolling and customizable 2D and 3D scroll effects
- Infinite scrolling across the app drawer and home screens
- Customizable app drawer that supports transparency and multi-directional scrolling
- Customizable dock with infinite scrolling and multiple pages of icons
- Multi-item select for bulk adding apps or widgets to folders or home screens
- Theme support, including support for themes from the now-defunct ADW Launcher
- Customizable icons via downloadable icon packs or icon packs from ADW Launcher
- Customizable colors for launcher accents, windows, and tools
- Customizable folder icons, backgrounds, and more
- Support for widgets in the dock
- Complete control over widget placement on-screen, including the option to overlap them if you want to save space
- Support for importing your previous icon layout and widget positions from another launcher or your phone's stock launcher
- Uninstall apps directly from the home screen or app drawer
- Folders in the App Drawer and custom Folder tabs (Prime Only)
- Customizable quick-launch gestures to launch apps or shortcuts from the home screen (Prime Only)
- Option to hide unwanted or unused apps from the app drawer without uninstalling them (Prime Only)
- Unread SMS, Gmail, and missed call badges in the dock icons (Prime Only)
Where It Excels
Nova
Launcher is probably one of the most well-regarded app launchers at
Google Play. (It's important to note that for the purposes of this
roundup, we're considering whole launcher replacements—not add-on
application switchers or shortcut tools that live on top of the launcher
you already use.) It's fast, flexible, and customizable without bogging
down your phone with a ton of unwanted bloat. It's highly polished and
actively updated. Even if you don't want a ton of tweaking options and
controls, you can pare it down to make it look and feel like a stock
Android app launcher.
Nova was one of your favorite launchers
so long ago, and even now that the age of app launchers has in many
ways passed (thanks to Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean becoming more
ubiquitous), it's still well regarded and well loved, and a lightweight
alternative launcher if you want something simpler, more customizable,
and less bloated than Sense or TouchWiz on your 4.0+ device. We have to
give them props for bringing Jelly Bean's launcher tools and options to ICS devices, and you can see in our featured Android home screens that it has a ton of customization potential.
Regardless,
the bottom line is that even though it's immensely customizable and
tweakable, it's still fast and easy to use. If you want the options,
they're there. If you don't, you can still have a fast, flexible, and
hassle-free Android experience.
Where It Falls Short
Of
course, it would be nice if Nova were available for more Android
devices, like those running Gingerbread, but we're not holding our
breath on that. Aside from that, we can't ding it on much else. A lot of
the best features are reserved for Prime, but it's not too expensive
and worth the four dollars you'll spend on it. It could be a touch more
customizable, especially compared with its major competition (which
we'll get to in a moment), but that's about it.
The Competition
Nova Launcher's primary competition is Apex Launcher (Free, $4 Pro),
and honestly, either of the two could easily have been our favorite.
They're both under active development, both pack tons of features, and
both are fast, flexible, give away a lot of great features for free but
are definitely worth the money you'll spend on their respective pro
versions. Apex's tablet version is all but unmatched, and its latest overhaul makes it really attractive. Plus, rolling in support for Dashclock Widget, a great way to customize your lock screen,
with Apex Notifier really sets Apex apart from the rest of the pack.
The trick is that Notifier requires running another app in the
background, which is a little bit of a pain, but not too much.
Regardless,
most of the customization options you'll find in Nova you'll also find
in Apex. Infinite scrolling, hiding unwanted apps, scrolling and
transition effects, customizable app drawer, icon packs, skins, they're
all there. If Nova doesn't appeal to you, Apex certainly will. You may
even like it better, and we can't blame you for that. It is missing a
few features Nova does have, but they're seriously neck and neck, and on
a different day we might award the top spot to a the other one.
Between Nova and Apex, that's the bulk of the competition for ICS+ devices. There's always Stock,
or running no third-party launcher at all, especially if you have a
Google Edition or a Nexus device, which we'd have to recommend unless
you really like the customization and theming options that one of these
two offers. If speed and a hassle-free experience is what you're looking
for—that is, you want your launcher to get out of the way and let you
do what you want to do—stock is the best option if you have it. If you
don't, we think Nova (or Apex) will give it to you.
A number of you pointed out we initially missed the previously mentioned Action Launcher Pro ($4),
which packs a number of unique features that many other launchers don't
have, including special gestures called "covers" for launching
applications from within folders without having to open them first,
"shutters," which allow you to swipe an icon and instantly generate a
widget for the app, and more. Plus, Action Launcher Pro can easily
import your layout and settings from other launchers, including Apex and
Nova. The only downside is that there's no free version, so you'd
better know you want it before you buy it.
Still, these aren't the only players here. Previously mentioned Everything.Me
(Free, in beta) is a flexible, customizable launcher replacement that
adds home screens, backgrounds, icons, and more with just a few taps. It
still requires 4.0+, but you can browse tons of pre-built launcher
configurations just by searching for them.
Similarly, Buzz Launcher (Free, in beta) is another launcher we've mentioned
that also takes the hassle out of configuring your home screens. Browse
a massive catalog of user-created and submitted home screens, select
the one you like, and it's instantly applied to your phone, complete
with any icons, apps, gestures, or tools required to make it happen. To
boot, you can also customize every aspect of your launcher yourself if
you prefer—the choice is yours.
It's been a while since GO Launcher EX (Free), was the crowd favorite,
and while development stalled for a while, it looks like it's been
recently updated with new features. The team behind GO Launcher EX let
it languish for a while, but it still has a ridiculously large user
community, runs exceptionally well on lower-end phones, and offers a ton
of configuration options, skins, icons, wallpapers, and other tweaking
tools you can add on top of it. The trouble with all of those options is
that they slow down the launcher something fierce, so you have to be
careful how much tweaking you really do. It's also possible that GO
Launcher EX's recent updates have something to do with the development
team's newest project, the $16 Next Launcher 3D, which by all accounts is stunning, customizable, and really impressive—just really tough to recommend to anyone at that price.
Similarly, for customization fans, ADW Launcher (Free, $3 for ADW
Launcher EX) offers broad compatibility with Android devices from 1.6
all the way up, offers ICS-style features to almost all of those devices
without taxing system resources, and is still skinnable and
customizable. Dozens of skin packs and icon packs are available at
Google Play for ADW. ADW and ADW EX are designed for people who really
want to customize their devices, even if it means sacrificing speed to
get there. Here's the bigger problem though: Development on ADW is all
but stalled, and the apps may be abandoned. ADW EX was updated in
February, but ADW itself hasn't been updated since November 2012—not
even with bug fixes or patches, which doesn't bode well.
Our pick for phones running Gingerbread and below, LauncherPro (Free, $3.50 Pro),
has long been abandoned by its developer. It still runs buttery smooth
on lower end devices, but it's hard to recommend when it's not getting
even basic bug fixes or patches, especially as new devices keep coming
out. If you do have an older, Gingerbread phone and hate your launcher,
give it a try, but everyone else can pass.
Speaking
of lower-end phones and pre-ICS devices, if you are stuck with one and
want the same kind of launcher that Ice Cream Sandwich offers, you may
want to try the previously mentioned Holo Launcher (Free), which brings the lean and trim features of ICS's launcher to Android phones running 2.2+.
For more Android launcher options, check out our Android Launcher tag page. We've discussed many more we don't have room for here, and if these options don't work for you, something there likely will.
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