this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
29 points (91.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43760 readers
2016 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Others have given a good description of what a launcher is.
But my reason for why I use a custom launcher is simple : I want a consistent UI experience, regardless of whether my current (or future) android phone is a Google, Samsung, OnePlus, ect.
For me a phone is tool, nothing more. I don't have the time or interest to "explore" the difference in UI's. In fact, Samsung's Launcher (Bixby?) inferriates me the most as the default "back" and "apps" Buttons are inverted compared to many other launchers... so it messes with my muscle memory.
With a custom launcher (I use Nova), I can restore/import my settings on any device (or custom version of android like lineage) and I've got the same familiar interface. Actually, Nova is quiet nice as it'll also show you greyed-out Icons for all the apps you has on your home screen. As the apps are installed, you can start to use them. This (for me) makes moving to a new phone much easier.
Just fyi: you can simply choose the order of the back and apps buttons. They are not inverted
Samsungs launcher is called OneUI, bixby is just the shitty voice assistant that thankfully is possible to turn off now, and you can choose which side to have the back and apps button on in the settings :D