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what's with custom launchers nowadays?
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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I don't think so... What are the main features you're looking for from a launcher?
IMO a lot of the launchers nowadays have matured a lot, and in some cases I can imagine devs for free launchers don't have 2k sitting around to buy the latest and greatest phone each year to update their launchers for compatibility with the latest Android APIs etc.
Personally I moved on from the standard sameish app grid type launchers and now use Niagara... the minimalism and simple design were a big draw factor for me - paired it up with some Lines icon pack to make everything look cohesive.
Kvaesitso (hope I spelt it correctly?) is a solid free alternative with a very similar feel to Niagara.
Not sure if I'd go back to app grid launchers, there's not too much differentiating them nowadays IMO, and each app having different icon designs feels kinda cluttered now that I've not experienced it for a few years. Material You's new unified icon design looks pretty nice though.
The standard Android development tooling includes extensive virtualization technology. So, on your dev PC, you can launch a program, which pretends to be Android hardware, then an Android OS is installed into there and then your app.
In that way, you can easily test with various Android OS versions, without buying tons of hardware.
Having said that, if the devs don't earn money, it may of course still be the case that they're not motivated to fix issues for an Android version they don't have.