To be fair, as both an iOS and Android user, the way android moves icons around drives me crazy , I much prefer the iOS “shift everything down” approach
Androids work out of the box too. The point is if you don't like the way it works you can find alternatives. If you like stock iPhone that's fine but I find it claustrophobic.
You’re talking to a bunch of geeks. There’s nothing wrong with the default pixel launcher. I used it for years. Most of these people have a butt ugly home screen and all kinds of ridiculous customizations that no one else has time for.
Ah yes a simple app drawer with A-Z scroll bar = NEEERRRRDDDDDD
I have the most plain home screen with dock icons and a wallpaper, and Nova Gestures to open my common apps one handed. Not a custom ROM/Xposed/TWRP/Magisk nerd since years now, live a very normal life. Do you Apple shills have a life, or is it just about consoomerism?
Hm, right now I'm on the latest and didn't notice much. Guess I'm not a power Nova user. I really only need the shortcuts when swiping up/down on icons. I'd switch if another launcher had that. I don't have a firewall set up either. Guess I should look into that?
Looking at iOS innovations going in android direction, they gonna make iphone with green bubbles someday and present it as amazing innovation, bet they even make you pay for subscription to make your bubbles green
Tbh the default launchers for mobile are garbage. Scrolling around looking for icons on a desktop like environment is not intuitive. Everyone's home screens just become a junk drawer of every app they've ever downloaded.
Genuinely the only way I want to use my phone. Everything I use daily is on the home screen, everything else I have to go searching for. White background, black icons, all notifications turned off. Simple and easy!
I just installed KISS to check it out, this is really nice too! I think niagara has a couple more bells and whistles, but it also could be I'm unfamiliar.
sliding across app for quick select actions is missing, haven't figured out how to access these yet (ie to jump directly into composing an email or text)(See edit 2)
inline notifications is a big difference standing out for me, I still need to use the notification bar?
KISS seems very focused on their search bar which is feeling like a bit more typing. I can tap the circle for an app list but it's on the far side of the phone? (See edit 1)
Niagara tries to be smart enough to bring apps you'll want to the front homepage, when youll need it. ie connecting to Bluetooth headphones pushes my Spotify to the top. I know KISS doesn't know my habits, but it seems simpler based on history of launches.
niagara relies on more gestures and swipes
KISS adding contacts to the home screen is a neat approach, people centric design is good
Overall It's small details though functionallly they seem very close to me. KISS still great and I love it's FOSS. They're doing a solid job of a simple, get stuff done launcher. I don't want to sound like I'm shilling, but Niagara has a free version you could evaluate for yourself
Edit: hmm after digging through the settings I see KISS supports a gesture for opening the app list - however none of the gestures are functional on my s23. Strange..
Edit2: Ah ha! Quick actions are available from the search, and add themselves to the history. I don't love having visible duplicates but it's workable.
Thanks for the run down! I saw there's a free version but didn't seem too different, so it's good to get the opinions of a user!
Rather than having to search everything you can have your commonly used apps show in a list on the home screen. Personally I turn this off and have a clean home screen, but pin favorites above the search bar. Tapping the search bar shows the most commonly used apps.
Also I think gestures are not from search results but from the home screen. I use gestures on my blank home screen. I have it set up so a swipe down opens the notification tray, a swipe right opens the camera, swipe left opens search, swipe up opens browser. But this is customizable. Not sure if it works if you have the common apps list showing on the home screen.
I don't think KISS has smarts like Niagara seems to. Just showing commonly used apps is about as smart as it gets. To my knowledge no notifications on the home screen either, though you can add widgets so maybe that's solvable in some way.
Anyway, seems they are similar but Niagara is a bit superior with KISS being a bit inferior but FOSS, both good options!
This was not allowed before. Until just recently, the technology didn't exist to place icons anywhere in the grid. They would automatically smoosh up into orderly rows starting at the top-left with no gaps between icons. Apple is continuing to develop cutting edge innovation, though, and now you will be able to leave entire rows and columns empty, or any specific icon space you choose!
Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get homescreen widgets customizable layouts (change number of apps per row etc). In 10 you might get custom launchers!
Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get home screen widgets.
We actually do have home screen widgets, as of like 2020. They got it sometime before I had my iPhone. And an app drawer!
As a former Android user, my iPhone home screen looks wildly different from people who’ve had iPhones for many years. I have very few icons on my home screen, I have widgets taking up most of the top of the screen to push the icons I do have down near my fingers (because Springboard is still stupid as of iOS 17, as this gif is pointing out), I have more widgets to the left (“Today View,” Apple calls this, it’s basically just a scrolling widget section), and then the app drawer equivalent to the right (which Apple calls “App Library”). It’s clean and beautiful and reminiscent of my lovely Nova launcher setup I had on my beloved OnePlus 7T Pro (may it rest in peace).
Whereas most longtime iPhone users just have page after page after page of apps and folders. Every app they own is on there somewhere. Which is ridiculous since on iOS you can just swipe down, type the first few letters of the app, and there it is.
I know, right? It also took them years to improve their notifications to work like Android’s (still aren’t quite as good). And I STILL can’t do what this gif is showing because iOS 18 isn’t out.
They were kind of shit, and confined to that left-most view. The new widget system they added a couple of years ago is really nice, and the addition of making them interactive with the last update was solid too.
As someone that uses both iPhone and Android, the way it is right now Apple's widgets feel better. I can't quite put my finger on why exactly that is, but like with pretty much everything (stock) Android, it just feels a little bit janky. It works just fine, and I really like the adaptive theme thing that my Pixel 6 has going on, but it feels a bit off.
I toyed around with the phones side by side, and I think honestly it's mostly just that Apple must be spending a fuckton of hours just working on getting animations to flow smoothly. That's the main difference I notice between my Pixel 6 and my 15 Pro Max. They both have 120hz screens, but the latter doesn't have any sort of flickering, weird clipping, animations that drop/bug out, etc. while the Pixel does.
I recorded two screencaps, doing roughly the same things, so I could see it side by side. This is from my iPhone, and this is my Pixel 6. I enabled the "record touch gesures" thingy on Android, an option I've no idea where/if it exists on iOS.
What's interesting is, I learned that it actually does pick up my gesure when I try to open the app switcher, it just either ignores it, or I'm not precise enough. I've never had this issue on my iPhones, but I have it almost every time I use my Pixel. It then pulls up this weird unlabelled app with a bunch of squigglies in it - I genuinely don't know what that is, and it took me aback because I was expecting the app switcher. Then there's a bunch of random flickering. One app is "censored" and it shows my wallpaper instead, which is a bit odd but that's fine. When dismissing the drawer, it remains briefly above the homescreen before just vanishing out of existence.
On iOS all the animations are smooth, nothing pops, flickers, or jerks. Even the padding in the widget drawer is eased in and out of existence.
Does it matter? That's subjective. Both are solid phones, and for the price I paid for the 15 Pro Max it fucking better be. With Android you have a lot more freedom, of course. It's not really something I value in my daily driver as my iPhone does all I want from it with zero hassle.
Before the app library existed you just had to have all the apps on a page and could not hide them. I ended up having like 20 page of apps. I eventually cleaned things up and have a page with apps I use, another page of widgets I use, and that's it. But it took me years before I thought to do that.
Oh I know, it was madness. I briefly had a used iPhone 3GS and then was pure Android until 2022 when I got an iPhone. By the time I came back it was customizable enough that I could make it look like Android, but that’s work for someone who lived with the terrible setup it originally had. I don’t blame existing iPhone users, it’s just something I’ve noticed.
It’s funny, I’ve had an Android, a Nokia Windows Phone, and an iPhone, and Windows Phone was the only OS in which I didn’t open every single app through search. The utter lack of an app ecosystem definitely played a part, but I honestly don’t think either of the other two handle home screens/“app drawers” very well. Every modern social media platform/messenger/etc. is built around vertical continuous scrolling because it’s easier. Why is horizontal, paginated scrolling the default for home screens?
Oh, so "Glad you guys are finally getting features we had over a decade ago" is "full hatred", but "I'm sorry, did you just send me a green text? didn't know you were broke" is fine?
Shit - my first Android phone had widgets, customizable homescreen (not just icons - but the entire layout an launcher), and anything else custom you wanted back in 2009.
15 years late to the game in an industry that's effectively 17 years old...
I don’t get it, I’m on iOS 17 and can move them around? I came from a pixel and I was surprised that you could. And you can also stack widgets which is nice
Yeah I have almost no apps on my Home Screen. Just one page of widgets, and 3 pinned to the bottom.
Otherwise if I want an app I just use spotlight. Quick swipe down and the first letter or 2 of any app and I’m in. I almost never touch the App Library.
This prob comes from using spotlight so much on Mac as well though.
I hadn’t considered the connection, but now that you mention it I use Spotlight pretty much exclusively on my Mac too. Hopefully they don’t mess that feature up in the future or I’m going to have to learn how to manually organize things.
You've just moved the same problem somewhere else if you do that.
I run a "main" home screen with Clock, Calendar, Weather and Alerts, then the next one is apps I commonly use, separated into folders, tools, photography, entertainment, comms, MFA, and then the next screen is my email.
Well this is good news. I never owned an Apple product until my recent purchase of an iPad Mini.
I was nervous about switching from an Android tablet, but everything went great until I tried to move my home screen icons where I wanted them, and resize a weather widget the way I wanted it. Neither worked, and I had to laugh at how ridiculous it was.
I'm not sure I understand what we're talking about. When you install an app on iOS, the icon pops onto the home screen or an adjacent page if there's no room. Can you not move the icons after that? I know you can put them in folders.
At least on my iPhone (no idea if iPads are different) you can reorder, but the icons will always be "dense" meaning no free spaces between them. They will always align in full rows beginning from top left. You can put stuff in folders, and you can change the order, but not have one icon in the third row, without the first and second row being fully populated with icons.
There is a tweak, which I don't recall even having on Android, that lets you select tons of apps and move them around, you know, like you could in a desktop environment... I wonder how much time will take to have that.
(Probably some 3rd party launchers or Android skins allow this, but I can't do it with Pixel Launcher).
I haven't seen that in an Android launcher, but there's nothing stopping it from being implemented. I've even seen Windows Mobile inspired launchers with similar widgets and menus on Android
Say what you will about Microsoft, lemmys, but Windows Phone 10 had great performance and battery life. It's a shame that it was nuked because MS couldn't bring themselves to go all the way on the Android bridge.
Nokia's Symbian was shit and you're the only person I've ever heard saying anything positive about it. To be a serious competitor to Android or IOS you need to have as much apps on the store and Symbian had very few.
I am saying that it was probably sabotaged by Microsoft leaning leadership at Nokia.
Also, despite being Linux core, Android itself was shit in the beginning. Gingerbread (G) was the first edition that won favour with buyers. Hardly any takers of android for its first six versions (A to F). Not even the techy nerds were buying Eclairs.
Around 20 years ago, iOS used to outclass everything by a big margin. Android, Nokia/Symbian, RIM, etc were closer to each other than to Apple. And now ...
As of 2024, fresh competition to android is needed.
Symbian was a fantastic OS, but it never competed with Android in any meaningful way. Nokia was already circling the drain when Microsoft bought them and first Windows phones (Lumias) were fucking awesome. And then fucking moron Nadella killed Windows Phone.
The Windows Lumina phone was a battery-draining buggy version with a smaller screen than the Linux version N9, When they turned that into Windows (Lumina 800), they had to use a smaller screen and less memory as Windows couldn't handle the hardware as MeeGo could.
When Microsoft bought Nokia, Steve Balmer (ex-Microsoft) was at Nokia helm. His work with Nokia was so much in the interest of Microsoft that he was rewarded with head chair of Microsoft not much time later.
You mean Elop? Ballmer was MS CEO when MS bought Nokia, but they were doing fairly well in the beginning. Fucking moron Nadella took over and killed Windows mobile. Despite publically admitting later that it was a mistake, he's still a fucking moron.
I'm a mobile developer and back around 2011 I was hoping like hell that Windows Phone would make it big. When you look at Xcode (for iOS), Eclipse (for Android and Blackberry) and MS Visual Studio (for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone) for mobile development, there was absolutely no comparison - it was Visual Studio all the fucking way. But Microsoft just decided to completely shit the bed and give up on mobile altogether. I still don't get it.
I loved it, it's a shame that phone failed to find it's market. Luckily Matias Duarte eventually incorporated the best parts into android. Swipe navigation is almost identical to webos
Honestly windows phone was sabotaged by both 3rd party developers who refused to port their apps to the platform, despite how easy it became AND did things like kill their own APIs to stop other developers from developing ports themselves, as well as by Google by not allowing their services on the platform.
The hardware was honestly top notch, even compared to my current S21 ultra. They were fairly pro consumer, having removable batteries, SD card slots and a 3.5mm jack right up until the end, even after the other big manufacturers removed them. And after the major update (the WP 8.1 update iirc) the software was really nice, intutive and pretty. I miss arranging and resising tiles, I miss having my pictures or album artworks showing up on the homescreen and I still use the Microsoft launcher on android to get the app drawer like I had on my WP.
Windows Phone was mostly sabotaged by first-party developers. Microsoft has a history of abandoning their mobile phone OSes after very short periods of time and nobody trusted them not to do it again. As a result few app developers bought into the ecosystem and smartphone enthusiasts told their friends not to get Windows phones, causing modest sales, causing Microsoft to immediately drop the platform.
Yes, it was a shame, and it only died mainly due to the lack of available apps in the store and bad management. MS took too long to release it with Android and iOS already well established in the market.. It was also the OS that resisted the longest in the Pwn2Own Hacking Contest in these years. While Android and iOS went down in less than a minute, before the hackers could access the data, on WindowsPhone they hit their teeth on a rock, after half an hour they could only access the cookies.
Microsoft fucked up in the smartphone market so many different ways. The misunderstood the UX paradigms that would work, refused to change when Apple had obviously stolen their lunch money, stayed the bad course they were on when Android stole Apple's lunch money and then didn't even notice it has slammed Microsoft into some lockers because that's how little windows phone mattered. By the time Microsoft did like... Actual good market research and focus testing to build an actual good mobile os (maximally ironically based on their Zune UX which had failed previously because Microsoft was infinitely too slow to the mobile audio market) it was exactly as you said. The perfect mobile OS just 5 years too late to matter. More than anything what they needed to do was prove the apps you actually needed were present on their store and pay OEMs money to make windows phones to establish market share to make up for having a lower count of apps. They failed to do so. Now their actually genuinely brilliant mobile os only exists as a series of android apps that no one really gives a shit about.
I actually use Launcher 10. I love it minus the weird glitch where the letter selector from the all apps list occasionally not working. Best Android Launcher around
Looks pretty clean, and with a proper search in the app drawer. If I wasn't so lazy and set in my ways, I'd switch :)
Sorry about making a repeat post earlier, I hadn't seen the other posts that suggested using launchers. I think my sync might be a bit slow with syncing posts.
If you dive into Nova's settings, you should be able to make a backup of your setup. Should just be able to restore your backup. That said, I don't use Nova much to confirm but that should be how it works
Edit: Dur I'm dumb. If you don't uninstall Nova, you can just swap between launchers because they're just apps. No backup needed as long as Nova doesn't get uninstalled
Are they letting you guys keep your screens on yet? Or is that something that's being saved for 19?
Probably not a big deal for most, but an always on display for time, calendar, and alerts without having to do anything to active my phone is clutch for me. When I see other peoples phones with blank black screens they look so dead.
They have actually introduced AOD, but only from the iPhone 15.
Their reasoning for not backporting the feature (unless phone is charging) is that the older models don't have LTPO displays that go down to the 1hz they do in AOD on the 15.
A stupid reason imo.
It’s been around since 2022. Though I actually turned mine mostly off besides the clock because it’s just unnecessary and distracting the majority of the time. And super unhealthy.
It does take more battery than just a blank screen, but it is kept extremely dim and automatically changes placement on the screen every so often so it doesn't burn in. Also, if it doesn't detect light (like if it were in your pocket) it turns off. I havent done the math, but i think playing a game on your phone for like 30 minutes would probably drain the battery a similar amount to a whole day if this display
