It has been way too long since we last asked our community members what their favorite Android launcher was. Since the last time we asked, there are a few newcomers to the game who have certainly taken some of that marketshare away from the big dogs. Apparently the last time we asked, Nova Launcher wasn’t even on the scene, so that should definitely change things up.

If you answer “Other”, please let us know in the comments which launcher you are using.

Wednesday Poll: What Android Launcher Are You Currently Using? is a post from: Droid Life

The GO team, who has released popular apps like GO Launcher, is ending the year by releasing their next project, fittingly dubbed Next Launcher. It’s $16. Yes, that sounds steep, but we have seen other super-powered launchers succeed at that price, most notably TSF Shell. And I would definitely consider this on that same level, especially after watching the video below. 

Next Launcher works with any device running Android 2.3.3 and above, but GO is recommending you have a dual-core processor.

The launcher itself, includes a massive set of features. Your home screens have endless possibilities since there really are no standard grids. You can rotate icons and move widgets around as you see fit. There are fancy 3D transitions, multi-select tools, quick resizing and arranging of icons, 3D widgets, and more.

At this time, it sounds like only a select few wallpapers work with it, but the GO team says that they are working to open it up. They also mentioned in the description of the app, that themes are on the way.

$16 is a steep price to pay for a launcher, but it looks like it has potential.

Play Link ($15.99)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cheers David!

GO Team Releases Next Launcher, a $16 3D Powerhouse is a post from: Droid Life

We know that not everyone is on Ice Cream Sandwich yet, so third party launchers like GO Launcher that were made for Gingerbread are still a big part of scene. GO Launcher in particular received a sizable update late last week that included a new UI for editing home screens, fancier design in the app drawer, and a bunch of other enhancements. We threw it on both the Galaxy Nexus and One X for a spin down memory lane and quickly remember why we were such big fans of this launcher before Android 4.0 came along. Now if only they had removed the legacy menu from the app, we may have thought about giving it a real shot on the One X. For now though, it looks like it will remain a Gingerbread launcher.

Play Link

Cheers Elwin!

GO Launcher EX Receives Update – New UIs in Home Editor and App Drawer is a post from: Droid Life

The original GO Launcher will always land in our top 5 Android launchers of all time. As one of the most stable and polished of them all with enough add-ons (themes, widgets, etc.) to keep you busy for days, very few can measure up. So when we heard that GO Launcher HD was available as a beta for tablets, we got a little giddy. The stock Android tablet UI has always been lacking in our opinions, so a tablet version of our favorite launcher is exactly what we have been waiting for. Did the GO team produce something worth your time though? I’d say so. 

Download:  GOLauncherHDv1.0.beta2.apk

Download the file from above to your tablet, tap on it when it finishes, and install.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via:  Go For Android

Cheers Joe!

GO Launcher HD Beta Available for Testing, Tablets Needed Love Too is a post from: Droid Life

I feel like it has been ages since we last asked everyone what their current launcher of choice was. Is everyone still using one of the old standards like ADW and LauncherPro or have you gravitated towards some of the more frequently updated replacements like GO Launcher? Is there a chance that some of you have adopted the current crop of stock launchers that Moto, Sammie and HTC are tossing out? I feel like there is some sort of new home replacement that is dying to be found that we just haven’t heard of yet. If you answer “Other”, please let us know in the comments which launcher you are using.

Tuesday Poll: Favorite Android Launcher Today Is? is a post from: Droid Life

The GO Launcher team tossed out an update today that included a handful of goodies including two new screen transitions and a new theme preview UI. On top of that though, they also released GO Locker, which is their take on a lock screen replacement. Just know that you will need GO Launcher installed  to use this new add-on (similar to all their add-ons) that so far has 4 or 5 options to use as your lock screen theme. Some give you the ability to jump straight into your phone, text app or camera. The only down-side I’m seeing so far, is a lack of options for you to really customize it with. Can’t even change the background of the lock screen yet? Hmmm.  Still, worth a look since it’s free!

Market Link

Cheers marshall!

GO Team Releases GO Locker, Their Take on a Lock Screen Replacement is a post from: Droid Life

Over the last couple of weeks, our buddy MrPicolas convinced us to give GO Launcher EX a shot at becoming our next home replacement app.  Since then, we have actually enjoyed the heck out of it and have yet to switch back to ADW or LauncherPro.  While it may lack some of our favorite icon packs from ADW, there are a variety of incredibly polished themes to choose from, along with enough customizations to make even the most accomplished home screen addicts drool.

In today’s update, those customizations became even more robust with the addition of 8 new app drawer transitions.  If you are not familiar with GO Launcher EX or what a fancy transition looks like in your app drawer, we have attached a quick screencast for you below.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Market Link

If you are wondering what my setup is, I’m using the Oreo Slice Wallpaper pack and the Clee 2 GO Launcher theme.

Cheers Picolas!

GO Launcher EX Receives Update, 8 New App Drawer Transitions Included is a post from: Droid Life

Mr. AnderWebs has released an update to his extremely popular ADW EX home replacement app today, and the crowds of fans are happy. The changelog is somewhat minor, but it still leaves other home replacements in the dust as they play catch up. If you have been using ADW on your Honeycomb tablet, then this update is definitely right up your alley. 

Market Link

What’s New:

1. Fix incompatibility with Android 3.2
2. In Android 3.x, the top Actionbar displays a customizable shirtcut to the left.
3. New dockbar design thanks to @josuas79
4. The dockbar can now be set as “primary”
5. Both docks are now always horizontally placed at the bottom on big screen devices (10″ tablets)
6. Drag and drop items inside dockbar folders.
7. New “Quick Folder Popup” implementation for user folders and groups launcher actions.
8. A bunch of other small tweaks and fixes.

Note: Anders has just tweeted that the “Hide Labels” feature has been broken with this update though, and he will issue a fix tomorrow.

Everyone still using either ADW EX, or LauncherPro? We have definitely seen a huge increase of people using GO Launcher as well these past couple of months. Let’s all be grateful that we have the option to choose.

Cheers Dave Kover!

ADW EX Receives Update, Android 3.2 Support and Other Minor Tweaks is a post from: Droid Life

Saturday’s App Of The Day was Timeriffic. Hope everyone had a chance to take a look at it.

Today, I am writing up an app called Simple Text. This app is for users who are looking for a change up from standard icons or for those of us who like minimalistic styles (Kellex). To use the app you do have to have LauncherPro,  ADW, or Go Launcher. (In the pictures above I am using LauncherPro Plus.) The app is about as straightforward as they come. There are two words you can edit. One is on top (see “SIMPLE” in pic) and the other is on bottom (see “TEXT” in pic). Just type in any word you want for top and bottom then customize size, scale, position, color and font. Save the icon and apply it to the launcher icon of your choice.

Here are his exact instruction per market:

How to use with ADW Launcher or ADW Launcher EX:
1. Long-press an app icon
2. Select “Edit”
3. Tap on the app icon
4. Select “ADWTheme IconPacks”
5. Choose Simple Text
6. Create your icon
7. Press Menu, then “Save Icon”

How to use with other Launchers ( LauncherPro, GO Launcher… ):
1] Run Simple Text in your application list
2] Create your icon
3] Press Menu, then “Save Icon”
4] Use your launchers specific change icon option and browse to your images ( stored in /sdcard/Simple Text )

Market Link

*Today’s free paid Amazon App Store app is: Aces Bubble Popper.

App Of The Day: Simple Text is a post from: Droid Life

Fans of GOLauncher should be excited after receiving today’s update and finding out that they now have 2 widgets to bring them closer to some of the other big dog launchers.  Well, they should only be half-excited since one of them is a task manager.  Yep, they opted for a task manager over say, a Facebook, Twitter or even calendar widget.  At this point, anyone with any knowledge of Android knows that task managers are useless after updating to Froyo, so it’s a little puzzling that they would go this route, unless of course their userbase is all pre-2.2.  At least the contacts widget is decent!

And I will admit though, that I’m excited to see the GO team start to release widgets and hope they continue to pump out more in the very near future.  Truthfully, if it weren’t for our dual-obsession with ADW and LP, we’d definitely be using GO as our daily flavor.

To use these widgets, you’ll need GOLauncher installed.  After that, hit up the links below to install each widget separately.  Then add them to your home screens just like you would any other widget.

Task Manager Widget | Contacts Widget

Cheers David!

GoLauncher EX Receives First Two Widgets: Task Manager and Contacts is a post from: Droid Life

In my 11 months here at Droid Life, it’s become apparent that most of our community use one of two different home replacement tools: LauncherPro or ADW Launcher. It’s gotten to the point that these tools are deemed essential to Android users because of the additions they bring to an otherwise boring Android home screen. That one row of buttons adds a lot of functionality and saves a lot of space; something that’s precious on a stock 4×4 grid.

Naturally, when a new home replacement comes along, it’s easy to dismiss it. How could it even come close to the “big two?” However, I urge you to read on: GO Launcher is no half-assed effort.  

I was originally going to write this article about GO Launcher, which comes to us from the aptly-named GO Development team. However, in the time it took to plan things, a new version of the launcher came out, titled GO Launcher EX. The EX version comes with some performance upgrades, theme support and some changes to how the app was structured: I’ll be taking a look at each in my review.

Hilarious mistranslations aside...

From the get-go, GO Launcher seems similar to LauncherPro and ADW; it adds the familiar dock to the bottom of your Android home screen that is both customizable and scrollable. You can have up to 3 rows of docks, which you move through by gesture-flicking left or right. I’ve turned this off, as I prefer a dock that stays constant.

Each dock icon can be customized with themed icons, or default ones. Furthermore, each button can be assigned a gesture command, as well. This is activated by swiping in any direction with your finger starting on the button. It’s a bit unintuitive at first, but it works. I can’t imagine it working in a moving situation, though, as sometimes my hands aren’t the most steady things in the world.

Also developed by the team is a separate app for notifying users of how many missed calls/texts/Gmail they’ve missed, right in the dock. The reason for the separation is that some people didn’t appreciate an app that looked into their call/text history. This function works fine, but sadly it doesn’t seem to co-operate with Handcent SMS; it works with the stock messaging app just fine.

However, when you open the app drawer, something is glaringly different; the background is solid, the waterfall animations of other launchers is not present, and there are two new tabs along the top: “Recent” and “Running”. These two tabs do exactly what you’d think: they list apps you’ve recently opened, and apps that are running, respectively. The latter acts as a task killer/applications manager hybrid.

Clicking on apps in this screen opens a pop-up asking you to choose “Close”, “Lock”, “Goto” or “Info”; while the first two’s functions are evident (killing the task or keeping it from closing, respectively), the latter two are interesting additions. “Goto” opens the app, while “Info” opens its page in your phone’s Settings > Applications menu. I find this extremely useful for when I want to move apps from my SD card and back, or just want to check up on things.

This functionality is on top of the ability to long-press on apps in the normal app drawer and uninstall them directly from there. After some haptic feedback, little red “X” hovers over every uninstallable app, and clicking on it once takes you directly to the uninstall page. As someone who used “Quick Uninstall” before it merged with Atrackdog, I cannot love this enough. Simple and no-frills. Apps can be sorted by name or installation date – newest first or last. This is a nice feature, but between sortings it defaults back to “newest last”; every time I install a new app, I need to re-sort.

Upgliding on any home screen brings you into a robust editing mode: you can customize order and number of home screens simply by dragging and dropping, or clicking on buttons. It also shows a live preview of screens, so when you’re thinking about order, you don’t need to keep a note of which is which.

Apps are selected in a unique way with GO: instead of dragging icons around, you have the option of long-pressing on one to bring up a menu. One can delete icons without having to drag them to a garbage bin (though the option still exists.) Icons can be renamed, which is a big plus: I don’t like apps without proper punctuation (I’m looking at you, “reddit is fun.”)

Apps are brought from drawer to home screen by long-pressing on an icon and then dragging into a “move to screen” area at the bottom. After that, you can drag it to one of the screen previews from before, so you know where it’ll fit in.

However, this brings me to my one problem with GO Launcher. When your screens are full, that app will not drop. This makes sense, except when there’s a folder I want to throw my app in. Because trying to move an app from screen to screen brings up that darned preview window, I can’t even throw it on an empty home spot somewhere else and then drag it sideways. Instead, I must make sure that there’s a blank spot to drag icons from the drawer to, then from there, I can put it in the folder I want.

You would be surprised how quickly this gets annoying.

The phone sports a nice themeing system, which actually got me to use themes on my launcher. Each theme (installed separately through the market) comes with a wallpaper, icon and dock set. Some, like the “original” theme I’m using in my screenshots, alter app icons significantly, while the “default” theme leaves them alone. I’m going to dock some points from GO because I’d prefer they use the Beautiful Widgets “in-app” system of downloading skins instead of the market method: this tends to clutter search results quite fast. What’s important is that the theming is not difficult to use and that it doesn’t disrupt the normal operation of the launcher.

That’s GO’s strength as a whole, actually: it just works. I haven’t had it crash in the approximate month I’ve used it, nor have I had any major tech-related screw-ups. I’ve never had to kill its process to resolve a freeze, or had the screens lock up while switching back and forth.

I honestly can’t say the same for when I’ve used ADW or LauncherPro.

That could be a result of a number of different factors: I’ve used LauncherPro, Helix and ADW on different combinations of unrooted and rooted, along with updated ROMs. Any of those things could have triggered my problems. However, what I know now is that minus that one annoying issue with the folders, GO’s earned its spot on my phone.

Download:

Link to APK

—
Matt Demers is a Toronto writer who doesn’t understand why everyone needs like 10 home screens; he’s whittled his down to one. If you’ve liked what you’ve read, follow him on Twitter.

In Depth: GO Launcher EX is a post from: Droid Life