I’ve been working on a launcher for a while now, do help me test it out!

Features include:

• Widget stacks (with auto scroll)
• Swipe up and swipe down to launch different apps
• Display app drawer icons as tiles or a list
• Individually resize home screen icons, for mixed-size icon layouts
• Freely position and resize a widget or icon
• Frosted glass background for widgets (experimental)
• App drawer folders
• Fade a widget
• Separate layouts for different screens for foldables
• Tap a folder to launch its first app (swipe to open folder)
• Assign a nickname to an app for instant app search and launch (e.g. searching “ff” launches Firefox instantly)
• Lots of custom animations and haptics

Planned features include:

• Profile switching with Tasker support
• Square tiles for app drawer
• Swipe to open a widget pop up

https://lemmy.world/post/14530643

Thanks for the report. Right here is actually fine to share feedback.

In terms of status bar and label colors, I’ll have to add in manual controls. Currently, things are handled by the system, which means different ways of displaying on old and new Android versions.

By bumping screen size, you adjusted the scale/ density of your screen items right? That’s one scenario I have not thought of. What you encountered is partly by design - the launcher detects a different screen and allows you to configure a new screen from scratch. I have plans to add a prompt to let users confirm if this is what they want, or if they want to copy over an existing layout.

I do have a long to-do list, mainly to bring this up to speed in terms of features. There are occasional reports of crashes which I’m also investigating

Thank you. That’s my test device as well, so it could be due to the app list retrieval process. I’ll look into it further

Thanks for the screenshots. I may add an option to display a frequently launched/ pinned set of apps. As for finding recently installed/ updated apps, the sort modes above should be helpful.

Folders wise, currently only 2 apps are shown as previews. It should be an easy task for me to code more preview styles.

Great suggestion on the “wizard”/ guide on first launch. The launcher starts a bit empty otherwise.

As for the app sorting, is there a reason why you prefer a permanent sort choice (by date)?

App shortcuts are definitely on my to-dos, and they will be supported as swipe/ gesture actions as well.

It will be priced very competitively, as it’s a personal project and I do not need to pay anyone else ;) Nova’s model before it’s bought over was great. i still recall being part of those who paid $0.10 for it. The Google group is how Google currently handles closed beta sign-ups, not very intuitive, I agree.

Thank you and look forward to hearing any issues you faced

I’ll share here if I open source this or a variant of this

Do let me know any issues you encounter

Used the plural of Octopus, perhaps I should go with Octopus Launcher instead?

Not in the immediate future, but I have been thinking about this since I wrote the first bits of code.

Fair comment. I do not have trackers that may pose a privacy issue, and it will remain so.

I plan to follow the model of Niagara and Nova launcher, but without recurring subscriptions and tracking. Closed beta testers will receive free codes to unlock the full version, so they get to enjoy all features they have now.

Coincidentally I was working on this a few days back. Mapping actions (including search) is definitely on my to-do.

I may group the widget list for faster loading, my initial thought was to have something different from the standard, and that was why I went for a search-based approach. Good suggestion.

Which aspects do you feel the speed can be improved? Also to share that there’s an animation speed setting where you can make animations much faster or slower

As for settings, things like preview are planned ;)

Thanks for the overall feedback!

Perhaps Octopus Launcher ?

I’ve been trying to replicate this. Do you have apps with non English names?

it’s still under lots of development, but here’s a few:

• Better support for foldables (separate layouts for each screen)
• (Auto-scrolling) widget stacks
• Fine/ free positioning of home screen apps and widgets
• Resizable home screen icons
• Display drawer items as tiles (or single list)

Just did, thank you

Do let me know your feedback and any issues you faced :)