Schon wieder steht das nächste größere Update für den Rootless Pixel Launcher zur Verfügung, Version 3.2 hat zumindest einen ordentlichen Changelog mit an Bord. Er erfreut sich jedenfalls großer Beliebtheit, der Nachbau des Pixel Launcher wird gern genutzt. Nun gibt es das nächste Update, welches unter anderen Verbesserungen diverse Optimierungen für die Performance der App mit an Bord hat. Ebenso wurde die Integration von Icon Packs überarbeitet, es gibt mehr originale Google-Icons und ein dynamisches Uhr-Icon.
Wer sich für den kompletten Changelog der App interessiert, wird bei Reddit oder unter dem Beitrag fündig. Wer einfach nur den aktuellsten Download will, findet die neue APK nun wiedermal bei GitHub.
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Major Features
Small-scale app customization
This took by far the most time. I completely rewrote the icon pack implementation and incorporated app hiding. The two are tied together, and when you use the system default icons this system is disabled and hidden. Switching to the system default icons will also reset the app hiding. In this way you can choose between the real Pixel experience without any settings, or more customization with an icon pack.
To access these settings, apply an icon pack and then long press an app icon. You will see that an edit icon has appeared, and in there you can enable/disable the icon pack for that icon, and hide the icon in the app drawer. To get it back, you can search for it using the search bar in the app drawer and then use the edit menu again. Icon packs are hidden by default, so your launcher menu isn’t cluttered with icon packs if you love to switch between icon packs often. You can unhide them in the same way you can unhide other apps.
Another improvement is that the icon pack is automatically re-applied when updated, so you don’t get mismatched icons from time to time.
If you are coming from version 3.1 you should go back to the default icons and then reapply the icon pack, after updating. This is because of some internal changes related to hidden app search.
Backported static app shortcuts
Android 6 & 7 can now get a taste of app long-press shortcuts. This works with static shortcuts like YouTube’s Search and Keep’s New Note. Due to permission limitations it’s not possible to backport more than the ones that are currently working.
Optimization
The complaints about performance issues were not ungrounded. I was compiling debug versions in Android Studio and releasing those as the final APKs. This time I did my research and enabled custom flags for the build. It is now built with minify and proguard for much better performance. I think you will feel it, everyone so far has noticed the significant boost in fluidity compared to 3.1.
Dynamic Clock
Paphonb, whose name you should be familiar with by now from Lawnchair and his own Modded Pixel 2 Launcher, came to me with the idea of making a new standard for moving clocks in icon packs. So we sat down, took a look at the Google Clock, and came up with a standard for icon pack creators to implement in their packs. My launcher is the first one to support this standard, and the template for it can be found in my Google Icons icon pack. This means that icon packs from here on can create their own dynamic clock.
Google Icons
Additionally, I extracted a lot of icons from all the real Google Apps and made an icon pack from it. Even the adaptive icons are included. Then I gathered a list of OEM apps and applied the icons to them. The download link for this icon pack will be at the bottom.
Minor features
- The At A Glance setting has been replaced with an enable/disable toggle. You can still access the customization settings by long pressing on the widget.
- The regular Google Search animation plays for users without Google App now.
- Device profiles have been tweaked with new 6×6, 5×4 and 4×4 grids, depending on your phone’s screen size and DPI settings.
- Icon packs load in the background instead of restarting the entire launcher.
- The dark widgets view now works on Android 5, 6 and 7
- The Pixel 1 Launcher’s navigation bar background has been added to the light widgets view for Android 5, 6 and 7.
- A rounded square icon shape option has been added to the icon shape selection for Android 8.
- Custom ROMs based on Android 8.1 can now directly build from sources.
Bug fixes
- Added an ellipsis (…) to At A Glance date when the text goes out of bounds.
- Prevented a possible crash on Lollipop/Marshmallow’s app drawer search.
- The full app drawer is always shown when the app search box is empty.
- Google Feed settings entry is hidden when the Google App is not available.
- App info parsing for icon packs has been changed according to the Nova Launcher standard.
- The app drawer search animation for Pixel users is completely rewritten, to remove the buggy layout positioning.
- Persistent notification dots and popups do not show up anymore for Android 5, 6 and 7.
- Non-working live Google Clock adaptive icon code has been disabled for Android 5, 6 and 7.
- Google Chrome’s white background should not show up anymore on Android 8. If you still get this bug, make sure Substratum and other device themes are disabled.
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