Gadgetory

three two one liftoff I'm Jules Wong with pocket now we last covered third-party Android launchers more than a year and a half ago I think it's well past time that we took a second look at five of them and see how they stack up in 2015 okay so let me just be real here and start off with the Google now launcher this is what's become the go-to replacement for OEM skins it's bright that's fresh and follows the latest Android design guidelines and yeah it just runs no frills stuff here they are standard app screens for your standard apps in standard folders along with standard widgets with a standard app drawer all drawn up and standard animations instead of looks yeah of course Google being Google it's put a constant search bar at the top and Google now integration to the farthest left screen now you don't send money to Google for use of this launcher but just keep in mind a point of view that if something is free to you then you're probably being sold as a product you are how Google makes money after all it's kind of the same deal for competitor yahoo i mean there AP launcher just recently got a revamp the overall aesthetic is a little different from google's but it's just as clean and pleasing what is it pleasing many users is the introduction of SmartStream yahoo seems to be ramping up its Google nowness on the leftmost screen unlike now though it's not terribly customizable it just so happens to pop in and out what it wants whenever you seem to be somewhere convenient and it also constantly tries to get you to download more Yahoo apps for the full experience it used to be that you could specifically Taylor what information or apps a v8 provided to what you were doing during different parts of the day you could override a v8 suggestions to not too much the case anymore fighting review started popping up on the play store once the update came and we can't be sure whether or not those had to do with this but it seemed that the AV launcher suddenly dropped from the Play Store for a few hours on July first this SmartStream implementation is in young days though so it'd be better if we had more I'm with it just to the right is a screen that piles your favorite apps on the bottom and a top portion dedicated to widgets it's the most customization you'll get in a v8 and it's only one screen right of that we see categorized app drawers where automatically selected apps are piled into music or productivity or transit categories and so on and yes there will be duplicates between categories but redundancy is a good parachute to have with this type of app sorting and there's also manual override as well farthest right contains the comprehensive Apple list alphabetically sorted a v8 is more curated controlled and compartmentalized experience than Google now so if you want even less fuss on your home screen well this options for you the Yahoo a v8 launcher is free for download same grain of salt applies from the now launcher here the rest of these launchers go to the extremes of customizability yet remained with the material design aesthetic apex launcher is one of them now if you're wondering why the heck the android army decided to take over my home screen well it's because it didn't do a good job of importing my desktop from another launcher the app setup is correct it's just that none of the icons are loaded in so I'd have to manually remove the apps from where they were and replace them from the app drawer to have the icons properly show the other two launches don't seem to have this problem and speaking of apex is compatriots you can edit colors of texts the backgrounds how animations work the sizes of icons and whatnot on all of them though to different extents depending on if you have the free version or the paid one and for the money or lack of money it seems like apex offers the most usefulness there are more customizations available of the box extending from extensive widget resizing why would you ever have a 2 by one gmail minute I mean what end widgets that don't natively support resizing can also be managed there are five gestures that can trigger different behaviors if gestures aren't your thing there are some softer buttons to get to those same behaviors if you pay 399 for the pro version of Apex Launcher you can get more assignable gestures tabs and folders within the app drawer duck swiping and you can also add multiple apps at once to a folder that's serious bang for buck heck the free version has some serious Bank to Apex Launcher doesn't constantly prod you to upgrade to the pro version and the feature adds do make the payoff worth it just make sure you take a little time to set your pages up over to nova launcher which actually provides more polished to the package than apex has the main bonuses are that you can position items into checkerboard arrays and that items can overlap each other important takeaway here though is that on the free version of nova there are no just your actions available that only comes on the prime version for 499 along with after our tabs and folders dock swiping and more scrolling effects if you want something that you can look at and be happy with take nova launcher with you finally there's action 3 the third iteration of the legendary Chris Lacey's custom Android launcher aesthetically there's nothing much that meets the eye until you pull out and always on a to z quick drawer from left folders can be made into covers the first app in a folder is the cover which you can tap to access that app you can swipe up or down to reveal the rest of the folder there are six assignable gestures available to you for free out of a possible 15 some of the appearance toggles are locked to the plus version toggles free from the start for the apex and nova launchers there's a constant banner in the settings menu urging you to pay the 499 to upgrade and get the quick page a right-hand side quick apps and widgets page shutters which basically make widgets more like apps quick theming capabilities akin to the HTC One m9 or samsung galaxy s6 infinite folders changeable icon packs and more there's a set back to action launcher from previous versions and that's the one swipe feature it's gone you can't access your quick drawer or quick page from any app anymore and that's a disappointment but still great what Chris Lacey is doing with this constant attention to detail and tweaking for action launcher however in striking the balance between giving free users a good taste of his product and pulling them and there are five bucks a pop over to the Plus version I think he went a bit too far trust me all the big pluses deserve to be paid for but some of the trivial things like being able to scale icons it can seem a little ludicrous so I can only recommend action launcher to those who are willing to pay upfront for these features what other launchers have you been using or looking at leave your records down below with a quick hit of the thumbs up and subscribe buttons on the way if you like this video of course follow pocket now on social media and at our main site too I'm Jules long at greenpoint zero on Twitter the eagle has landed see you soon