Smart Launcher Release Notes

New features

• Dock: A brand new dock system that supports multiple rows and columns, widgets, and multiple dock pages.
• Liquid Glass theme: A new visual style based on light refraction, creating a more realistic sense of depth and transparency. The effect is fully customizable, letting you control its intensity and look to better match your setup.
• Advanced gestures: New two-finger gestures like pinch and rotate, plus improved gesture consistency across all home pages.
• Flexible page system: Home pages and extra pages are now unified, allowing smoother navigation and consistent gestures everywhere.
• Customizable default page: You can choose which page opens by default, including using the app drawer or search as the central page.
• Foldable and landscape layouts: Support for separate layouts on foldable inner screens and in landscape mode, with automatic setup guidance.
• Your Feed evolution: New reading mode, topic browsing, provider filtering, bookmarks, and better RSS handling for broken or complex feeds.
• Infinite scroll: Turn your home pages into an infinite carousel, so you can reach any page from any direction.
• Swipe up to open folders: An option that lets you quickly launch the first app in a folder with a tap, while still being able to open the folder with a swipe up.

Improvements

• Animations and interactions: New physics-based home return animations and smoother drag and drop interactions across the launcher.
• Customization depth: Added many new icon shapes, more dock pages, adjustable blur and vibrancy, and better icon pack color support.
• Enhanced search capabilities: Search now supports abbreviations, unit conversions, shipment tracking, and faster direct website opening.
• Large screen support: Several settings screens were redesigned to work better on tablets, foldables, and large displays.

Other changes

• Nova Launcher backup import: You can import backups from Nova Launcher to quickly migrate your home screen layout, icons, and basic setup into Smart Launcher.
• Updated platform support: Target and compile SDK updated to the latest Android version, preparing the app for future system changes.
• UI refinements: Improved spacing, proportions, and Material You color usage across several parts of the app.

New features

Your Feed: A customizable alternative to the Google Discovery panel. Enabled by default to all new users.

KWGT backups: we’ve partnered with them to let you back up your customized widgets as part of your Smart Launcher backup.

Opaque Glass: a new blur theme that adapts its appearance based on the current UI mode.

Material You: a new launcher theme that applies to Smart Launcher colors from Material You

Improvements

Free version upgrade: Free users can now enjoy unlimited extra home screens, with no restrictions.

Privacy enhancements: Sharing your app list with our server is no longer required. Automatic app sorting is now optional and only requires sharing your app list if you choose to enable this feature.

Enhanced color picker: The color picker now includes the complete Material You palette, making it easier to choose your favorite colors.

Optimized for foldable and tablet devices: The Edit Theme screen has been redesigned to make better use of large screens, offering an improved experience.

Other changes

The Calendar Widget now features a button to quickly create new events (only in the larger formats)

Fixed a bug that slowed down icon loading in folders

New features

Photo Widget:

Display your favorite photo right on your screen. Plus, get creative with customizable click actions. Tip: Pair it with Icon Pack Studio for big and awesome app icons.

Automatic Daily Backup:

Set it and forget it! Your device will back up your setup every night, as long as it's charging and has enough battery. Don't worry about storage; each backup replaces the previous night's.

Themed Widgets:

Not exactly new, but soon available for all! We moved the toggle and now it is easily accessible in Preferences -> Global Appearance -> Widgets.

Clock Font:

Customizable clock fonts are back! Choose a unique font just for your clock, perfect for when you want it to stand out from the rest of the app.

Blurred Wallpaper Effect (for Wallpapers from Other Apps):

If you are running a recent version of Android, you may have faced the issue where the blur effect is not working for your wallpaper because of an Android limitation. We implemented a workaround that allows Smart Launcher to access your current wallpaper by requiring you to take a screenshot of your wallpaper.

Now, if the Blur Effect stops working after changing your wallpaper, you can enter "Preferences -> Global Appearance -> Theme," and click "Blur Effect" to access the wallpaper capturing screen.

Dynamic calendar icon:

Your calendar icon will update every day to match the day of the month

Wallpaper cropper:

The wallpaper cropper has been improved with new options

Improvements

The number of home pages available to free users has been increased to 3

Other changes

The Calendar Widget now features a button to quickly create new events (only in the larger formats)

Fixed a bug that slowed down icon loading in folders

New features

• Introducing the new Weather widget, a multi-page widget that displays forecasts for today, the next few hours, and the upcoming days.
• Smart Launcher now offers full support for Themed icons. You will find a new icon pack called "Themed icons" in the icon appearance settings. Themed icons will be available on any version of Android.
• Unlike Pixel Launcher, the Themed Icon appearance will be applied to any icon installed on your device, even those that do not natively feature a Themed Icon.
• App shortcuts are now available on the search page.
• Calendar event search: Search and find any event in your calendar within the next 365 days.
• Setting search: You can now search Smart Launcher settings from the search page.
• File search: You can now search for local files. On Android 10, you can search for any file in any folder. However, on Android 11 and higher, the search is limited to media files due to Android API restrictions.
• Added a new home screen animation called "Free Fall"

Experimental new features

• Themed Widgets! To enable this feature, perform a long press on "Version info" in the preference menu. Then, enter the "dev options" menu and enable "Themed Widgets.

Improvements

• You can now hide contacts from your search page. Hidden contacts will have their visibility highly decreased; they will never appear as suggestions and will be displayed after any other contact.
• The Search Page is now faster and more efficient, reacting to data changes such as when an app gets uninstalled. These new changes make it easier to add new types of results in the future.
• The weather forecast is now updated more frequently
• Text previews in the font picker are now editable

Other changes

• Smart Launcher is now ready for Android API level 33. This change was requested by the Play Store, and it required some adaptations for Smart Launcher to work with the new API restrictions, especially those related to wallpapers.
• Updated libraries

Bugs fixed

• Contacts in the Search Page, are now correctly sorted by usage frequency.
• Fixed home screen animation on Xiaomi devices running Android 10

The update introduces awaited features like the Widget Stack and improved gesture support together with a major update of some core components that improved performance and stability.

New features

• Introduced the new Widget Stack
• You can now select custom colors for your Note Widgets
• You can hide days without scheduled events in the Calendar Widget, and you can extend the visualized days to 14 or 21 days.
• Multiday events are now correctly displayed in the Calendar Widget
• Added 3 new home screen animations, Blur, Fade, and Pixel.
• Added "Midnight lights" a new collection of SL-exclusive wallpapers

Improvements

• The App page code has been modernized to take advantage of the most recent technologies. This required an insane amount of time but we got in return better performances, several bugs fixed, and a code easier to upgrade.
• Fixed unnecessary Calendar widget UI reloading
• If you delete the Utility category it won't be automatically recreated as it used in the past.
• Improved how the Music Widget refreshes the current track info.
• Responsive widgets (also 3rd party) can now better use the available space.
• When a new shortcut/folder is added to the App page, the grid scroll to display the newly added item
• The back gesture is now always available in the search panel
• Now you can return to a setting screen after leaving it by using the recent app screen

Bugs fixed

• Fixed the double-tap on icons in a folder.
• Shortcuts added to the home/drawer now show the correct icon.
• The apps on the App page are now correctly launchable while using Talkback (accessibility)
• Fixed Music Widget layout on RTL languages
• The "Problem detected" screen now only appears if SL crash. Previously it could be launched because of issues caused by the system or unusual user behaviors.

Smart Launcher 6.1 introduces an exclusive set of widgets specifically designed for this launcher. The new widgets are responsive, animated and less energy draining compared to the common Android widgets.

New Clock widget

A flexible clock widget that will fit any space with style.

Music widget

Works with all the most popular music players/services. Adapts its color to the album cover or to your screen, when you are not playing anything.

Calendar event widget

Display your events from your calendars on your home screen.

Battery widget

A simple widget that shows your battery charge and status.

Compass widget

An animated widget that simulates a real compass on your phone.

Note widget

Add colored notes to your home screen.

New widget picker

We renewed the widget picker to make easier to browse your widget collection.

New default wallpaper

Giovanni Piemontese designed for Smart Launcher this beautiful wallpaper inspired by the color captured by the James Webb Space telescope.

Other improvements

• Smart turn off is now more accurate and inform the user when the screen is going to be turned off.
• We changed the behaviour of the "delete" button. Now it will be possible to trigger the action by clicking it twice. The old interaction (long press) is still working.
• New search engines: Brave and Neeva
• Performance improvement
• Tweaked animations
• Wallpaper parallax can be enabled when setting a new wallpaper
• Improved launcher accessibility

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused invisible folders on the home screen;
• Fixed drag and drop when the widget page is placed on the top;
• Fixed several bugs related to created shortcuts;
• Scroll in widgets now works as expected;
• The clock is now updating when timezone changes

Home screen

Icons can be moved everywhere

Widgets pages are now extra Home pages, where you can put widgets or icons

Freeform widget editing is available everywhere

New grid system designed from scratch to keep your icons and widgets always perfectly aligned

Home screen icons can have labels

Now you can have multiple Flower/Honeycomb/Arch layouts and place them where you prefer. They are now called "icon groups" and you can add them as if they were widgets.

Almost every area of the launcher has been redesigned.

The search bar is now freely movable

When the ambient theme is selected, the search bar changes its color depending on its position on the screen.

The built-in widget clock has been refreshed with new icons and a different extended layout

The built-in search bar transforms into a search icon if is resized too much.

You can now configure the icon groups directly from the home screen.

New option "Rotate on place". If enabled, when the device is rotated, the home screen items will independently rotate while staying in their original positions.

When the grid size is changed, widgets are rearranged using the available space.

App page

New immersive design

The app grid always starts at the center of the screen to improve ergonomics

Added a new category "Smart devices"

Folders

New folder design. Folders still open near your finger but they feature an immersive look.

Folders now use the same appearance of the page where they are located.

You can edit the folder icon by pressing their title when expanded

Preferences

Kid mode. You can enable an option to request verification to unlock home screen changes.

Access to backups is protected by your PIN, if set.

You can now select the folder where your backups will be stored.

Widgets

You can adjust your widget corner radius

You can change your widget fonts

You can launch the app that created a certain widget, by performing a long press on the widget itself

Support for Android 12 re-configurable widgets

Tech

Compiled for Android 12

Access to storage is now limited to the folder chosen by the user

Removed permission to access accurate user position (it was unused, anyway)

Improved support for Foldable devices

Improved support for tablets

Scrollable categories

You can finally use a swipe gesture to change the current category in the Smart Launcher App page. The feature is enabled by default, but only if the App page is positioned on the top or on the bottom of the Home page.

If this is not the case, remember you can move your pages from Preferences -> Page manager

Wallpaper 3D perspective

When enabled your wallpaper will move accordingly with your device, generating the perception of a 3D space.

You can find this new option in

Preferences -> Wallpaper -> Settings

(gear button)

Global appearance

Smart Launcher 5.5 introduces a new menu where you can find all the options related to the Smart Launcher appearance.

Customizable fonts

You can now customize your launcher using the entire Google Font Library. The font picker includes categories and a search box to make it easy to find the font you are looking for.

You can find this new option in

Preferences -> Global appearance -> Fonts

Editable themes

We heard from you. In SL5.5 you will be able to tweak your launcher appearance by changing the colors and opacities. You can use the new settings to adjust the app page transparency, change the text colors, or to create unique combinations to customize your phone.

You can find this new option in

Preferences -> Global appearance -> Edit theme

Picked icons normalization

After picking a picture to replace an icon, you will have the choice to keep its shape or to change it to match the other icons' shape.

5 new adaptive shapes

Heart, Pebble, Arabesque, Supersquircle and Vessel.

Other additions

• You can now resize the icon labels' text size.
• The Premium Features screen will help you to find all the premium features you purchased in the same place.
• You can now decide to use the same icon appearance settings for both your home page and your app page. You can do it in Preferences -> Global appearance -> Icon appearance -> Home page, by enabling "Use global settings"
• A new wallpaper specifically designed for Smart Launcher by Giovanni Piemontese
  available in Preferences -> Wallpapers -> Smart Wallpapers

Other improvements

• Rebalanced UI for big screens
• Blur now applies even behind the Smart Search bar
• We improved the news page with a new UI and several performance improvements. You can also drop a news category by long-pressing a tab and tapping "remove".

Fixes

• Fixed a problem that caused icons of different sizes on the App page.

A goodbye

We always tried to maintain old features even when these exist only for legacy reasons. However, we really felt it was time to remove lock screen support from Smart Launcher.

Lock screens were introduced a long time ago in SL2 and even if they worked well enough on older Android versions they require too many compromises on modern devices. We stopped working on them years ago and now we don't feel like we still want to suggest this experience to our users, so we are removing lock screen support in SL 5.5.

If you will miss them, remember that most of our lock screens can work even without Smart Launcher and that in any case, all the lockers will continue to work with SL3.

Folders can be added to the App page by opening the menu and selecting "Add Folder".

You can add Smart folders which are folders that work a bit like automatic categories. Just pick the photography folder and all your camera apps will be automatically grouped in the newly created folder.

Notifications in the App Page

The apps in the App Page will now reports new events with a badge. You can enable this option from Preferences -> App Page -> Notifications -> App page Notifications

Support for Android 10 gesture navigation

Following the release of the most recent Android 10 update, which introduce compatibility between the gesture navigation and third party launchers, we introduced several changes to ensure the new navigation system is perfectly working with Smart Launcher.

Please note: your device may say that Smart Launcher does not support gesture navigation. This message is just misleading, since the support for third party launchers is provided by your device firmware. In this case all you can do is to wait for an update from your device manufacturer or to switch to the 3 buttons navigation system.

Massive code changes

We changed over 40.000 lines of code, migrating most of the launcher to Kotlin and adopting modern approaches suggested by the Android dev team. According to our tests, Smart Launcher 5.4 produces up to 60% less frames over 16ms compared to SL5.3, resulting in a smoother experience.

Other additions

• 4 new wallpapers specifically designed for Smart Launcher by Giovanni Piemontese
  available in Preferences -> Wallpapers -> Smart Wallpapers
• New option "Show hidden apps in search results"
  available in Preferences -> Security and privacy

Other improvements

• New folder appearance, both for App Page and Home Page
• Support for Adaptive icon packs
• You can now drag apps from the Search Page to the Home Page
• Improved interactions and animations
• Improved Icon Pack Studio integration
• Free users can now add up to 2 widgets in the Home page
• You can now drag apps from the Search Page to the Home Page

Fixes

• Fixed several issues relative to the built-in weather clock widget.
• Fixed a problem that prevented the search bar to execute USSD code

Google Page

You can now add Google Now/Discovery to your Smart Launcher home screen. Open the Page manager, remove a page on the left or on the right, then add the Google page and follow the instructions.

Redesigned Search page

The new Search page has a more modern design, is much faster and includes some modern features like fuzzy search. Also you can now search for app on Play Store.

Notifications

The notification badge has now the same shape of the icon. The background color is lighter and overall the readability is better.

Custom Folder columns

You can now change the number of the columns of the folders. You can now have from 2 to 6 columns according to your preference.

Other additions

• New wallpaper
• Better support for KLWP
• Added an option to hide the Play Store icon in the app page
• The topics "Technology" and "Videogame" are now available in the news page (the availability may vary depending on your country);

Improvements

• Buttons and other interactive part of the UI now use a more consistent feedback;
• The news page now uses a more readable font;
• The option "Automatically hide unused apps" now informs the user when an app is automatically hidden;
• Improved theme support;
• It is now easier to find the option "set as hidden" for apps in the drawer;
• You can now easily access details of apps in the home screen;

Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the impossibility to get data from our server after restoring a backup
• Fixed an issue that caused the SL Clock widget to freeze on Android P
• Fixed an issue that prevented to replace an icon with one picked from the gallery
• Fixed authentication issues on Samsung S10+

Dark mode

All the menus and dialogs now support a dark theme. The dark theme is enabled when enabled by your system preferences (Android Q and higher), however you can force it to be always active or to be enabled during night time or when you are using a dark wallpaper (Android Lollipop or higher).

AMOLED black

After enabling the AMOLED black option, the dark theme will use a pure black background instead of a grayish one. This will allow AMOLED screens to save even more energy.

Redesigned wallpaper selector

The new wallpaper selector has been redesigned using smooth shadows and miniatures which use the same aspect ratio of the device in use.

Add multiple icons at once

You can now add multiple icons to the home page or to a folder at once. In order to do it, press the button to add a new icon, then select the objects you want to add and click on "Confirm" to complete the operation.

Modular page system

Smart Launcher 5.2 introduces the possibility to rearrange the “pages” which compose your home screen. This allows more customization and gives to the users the choice to enable or disable certain components depending on their needs.

News page

One of the new components introduced with Smart Launcher 5.2 is the News page. The news feed is customizable with specific interests and with different layouts:
large, compact or only text. Like any other page in SL5.2, the news page is movable on one of the four sides of the screen. By default, its position is on the top for users coming from SL 5.1 or previous, on the left for new users.

Blur mode

The Ambient Theme is now even more complete thanks to the new blur mode, a complex system of different overlays that creates a perfect blend between UI and wallpaper and guarantee text readability avoiding darkening the background.

Redesigned Menus

We worked on our community feedback and we redesigned every menu to be more consistent and intuitive.

Automatic app page cleaning

Enabling the option Hide unused Icons in the Preferences → App Page, Smart Launcher will automatically hide icons of apps never used. Nothing will be uninstalled, everything will be accessible from the Hidden apps menu, but your app collection will look much slimmer!

Tools to detect malware

During the last year, we collected many reports of users seeing popup ads and experiencing other unwanted behaviors during the usage of their device. The worse is that many people thought that ads were showed by the app running at that moment. This harms us and other apps, so we decided to take action and introduce some simple tools that can help users identify suspicious apps. The tools are available in:
Preferences > Smart Fix

New Dark Wallpaper

Designed exclusively for Smart launcher 5.2

Fixes

• Category bar position can be placed on the left, right, bottom or auto.
• Apps can be shared when long press an icon in apps page.
• Appearance settings are now moved in Global Appearance.
• New share screenshot menu.
• Home screen gallery has been added to settings.

Light Ambient Mode

The ambient theme was designed not only to make the UI more graceful but also to ensure the readability of the information on the screen (widgets/icon labels). In Smart Launcher 5.0 this goal was achieved by using a dark overlay on top of light wallpapers but this caused light wallpapers to look darker and dull. Light Ambient theme works by keeping unaltered the wallpaper lightness while making the foreground UI items black.

Search Page

The Search page is now a module like the App page or the Widget page. This means they have the same working and they will, eventually, be swappable in the near future.

Notifications

The notification system has been rebuilt. The system in 5.0 was designed to work only using the official Android APIs. Sadly, app developments rarely use the API (event Gmail doesn’t!) so we stopped trusting in other developers’ goodwill and we created a system that uses different approaches to get notification count. Hopefully, this will allow us to avoid showing a blank dot when the option “show event count” is marked.

Rename folders

You can now rename a folder by clicking its name while it’s open.

Showcase your home screen

The functionality “Take a screenshot” is now Showcase your home screen. The tool has been improved to create more complex artwork, adding shadows and simulating a device frame. It allows to preview the generated artwork and to save it locally or share it as before. If the tool will be appreciated we will expand it in future.

5 new adaptive icon shapes

The new shapes add new effects like brushes and pixels.
Feature pack is required to unlock adaptive icon shapes.

Fixes

• In SL 5.0 enabling a single gesture caused all the pages to be scrollable only by swiping from the borders. In SL 5.1, double finger gestures don’t interfere with page navigations anymore and single finger gestures affect only a specific direction.
• Improved drag&drop interactions. For example, now you can move an item from a folder to another one with a single drag&drop action.
• Android P users can now turn off their screen without any side effect (like fingerprint not working)
• Home page icons have been updated with more vibrant colors.
• Some UI elements have been updated with rounded corners.
• The wallpaper scroll is now interpolated to appear more natural.
• The search bar can now use Ambient theme even when set as floating (Search bar → appearance →Skin → Ambient)
• Dark system icons are automatically enabled on very light backgrounds (Only Android Marshmallow and higher)
• Many other improvements and bugs fixed.

The new Design

Our vision was to make Smart Launcher ready for the future

We focused our attention on some key aspects to better address the future trends. Because of the dimension of new devices, some UI elements have become difficult to reach with a single hand. The design of the launcher has moved to the bottom the items you usually interact with the most, while it reserves the upper area to information and visual contents.

The new design is based on a unified visual language we created and named Acrylic Design System. It provides a set of styles, components and guidelines in order to give the user a coherent and consistent experience and interface.

Ambient theme

Objects in the real world are never black or white, they reflect colors and adapt to lights. We applied this idea to the Smart Launcher UI and we got a new, more materic look and the ability to automatically match the wallpaper in use.

Adaptive icons

Adaptive icon is a new icon format introduced with Android Oreo 8.0.

Smart Launcher 5 has been designed to exploit the advantages of the new format and is the first launcher to introduce Adaptive icon backward compatibility for every device running Android 4.0 or higher!

And if you’re already running Oreo and you miss the classic not-adaptive icons we have a good news, you can have your old icons back!

Search bar and Search page

We have moved the search bar at the bottom and we have given it a new look fully integrated into the design of the launcher. The search page has been rethought as a starting point for any interaction with the device. The new layout shows more contents and allows to perform some actions like adding a new contact and performing calculations!

New drawer layouts

The new category bar has been moved to the bottom to be closer to your thumb. However, you can choose between 3 different layouts. You can have the category bar on the side, on the bottom or you can disable it for a more “classic” look.

New clock widget

The new built-in clock shows info about alarm, next event and weather.

Freeform widget mode

You can now resize and move widgets in the home page without grid snapping for a complete control over your home screen.

Redesigned UI for preferences

Preferences have been restyled and reorganized to be more readable and easy to understand.

New wallpaper picker with backup

The wallpaper picker has been redesigned to show more contents from different picture sources. We included an option to backup your previous wallpaper before trying a new one.

Backup with preview

A short text is often not enough to recognize a specific backup. New backups, created with Smart Launcher 5, include a preview that makes it easier to find the backup you want to restore.

Integrated notification plugin

The notification plugin has been integrated in the launcher and is now more stable and reliable.

Share your home screen

Take a picture of your home screen and share it attaching some info about your set up. We expect to expand this functionality with advanced editing tools in the future.

A fantastic easter egg

Still not found by anyone at December 2019.