I may be kinda weird. My phone has looked the same for probably 10 years or more. The home screen is a wallpaper but otherwise blank. My name is at the bottom in the dock area, six letters, like M Y N A M E. When I tap a letter it opens a certain app or folder of apps. When I swipe up it opens others. For example, tap the M and it opens the camera, swipe up and it opens a folder of photo apps. Same for all six letters. I have one other page with active widgets for info I can take in visually like weather radar, news ticker, etc but on my main page, with those 6 taps and swipes I can open anything in a couple seconds max, one handed, probably with my eyes closed for oft-used apps.

The letters of my name are 6 different images, I just typed my name in a nice looking font, took a snapshot of each letter and made the background transparent. So to set it up I drag the camera app to the dock then change it’s icon to the M.gif I have saved on my sdcard, then set a swipe action to open the photo apps folder. Really simple… as long as the launcher has those options.

Since I read this post I’ve been looking at other launchers. I could find no way to get rid of the search bar in the dock with one launcher, another one didn’t even have a dock, it had a vertical A-Z on the side so you could open a list of apps alphabetically. Lawnchair won’t let me choose my own images for the icons in the dock, I can only select system icons or an icon pack.

I’ll keep looking, and maybe I can make my 6 gif into an icon pack to use with Lawnchair or something. But without those options I will have to start using my phone in a completely different way than I have been using it for over 10 years.