Nothing Launcher beta is now available for devices on Android 11 or above
A couple of weeks ago, Nothing, the company founded by Carl Pei, released a new launcher app to tease a preview of Nothing OS. While it was intially limited to the Samsung Galaxy S21/S22 and Google Pixel 5/6 phones, Nothing Launcher Beta is now available for all devices running on Android 11 or above.
Let's take a tour of its features, and find out if it offers something new.
Home Settings
Long press on a blank are of the homescreen to view the launcher's menu. It has three shortcuts: Home Settings, Widgets, Wallpaper & Style.
The Home Settings allows you to set Nothing Launcher as the default launcher. You can toggle the Notification Dots option, which will display a badge on top of icons to indicate a new message has arrived. The launcher will automatically add new icons to the desktop when you install apps, you can change this behavior from the Settings.
Gestures
Swipe up on the screen to access the app drawer. Swipe down to view the quick settings panel, a second swipe downwards displays the notification panel.
Widgets
Long press on the homescreen and tap on the Widgets option. Scroll the list, and drag the widget to the homescreen where you want to place it on. Once you have added a widget, you can resize it by long pressing on it and dragging its sides. To delete a widget, tap and hold it and drag it to the top of the screen where it says "Remove". To edit a widget's settings, tap and hold on it, and then tap the Edit button (pencil icon).
Nothing Launcher ships with three clock widgets, an analog clock, a digital clock, and a weather widget. The digital clock has a solid style and a transparent style.
Note: The weather information seems incorrect, at least for my region. It was nearly 12 degrees Celsius off the mark. I tried setting the location to some US cities, and the results were better. So, the weather provider used in the launcher could be the issue here.
The Google Search bar at the bottom of the home screen is not a widget, and it's persistent across all screens. It cannot be removed and takes up a lot of space.
Wallpaper & Style
Nothing Launcher has unique bespoke wallpapers, all of them have a glass panel effect with some vertical lines. You can access the extra wallpapers and ringtones from the Bonus Content page. The app supports Wallpaper Scrolling across home screens.
The App Grid setting lets you set the app drawer's size, you may choose between a 4 by 5 or a 5 x 5 grid. This also affects the dock's size and lets you place 5 icons on it.
The launcher uses icons that are close to stock Android's style, this could be a hint that the upcoming Nothing 1 Phone could run on an OS that is like AOSP. The icons might be boring, but the good news is that Nothing Launcher supports third-party icon packs.
The bad news is that the launcher lacks an edit option for shortcuts, meaning you cannot change the icon style of a specific shortcut, or rename the shortcuts. You can create folders by dragging an app shortcut over another one, and it lets you rename folders.
Max Icons and Max Folders
Two features that stand out in Nothing Launcher are the Max Icons and Max Folders that you can toggle. Long press on an app's icon on the home screen and press the <> button to maximize the icon's size, it turns the shortcut to a huge button. Likewise, you can enlarge a folder's size.
Icon packs used in the screenshots: Delta Icon Pack and Arctic Icons (Dark and Light icons). The apps are free and open source.
Is Nothing Launcher any good?
If you're using Nova Launcher or Lawnchair or a similar app with a lot of customization options, I don't think you'll find that there is anything special about Nothing Launcher. It's still in beta, so there's room for improvement. The app's free and doesn't have ads, so I think it is worth a shot.
Download the Nothing Launcher beta app from the Google Play Store.
What do you think about the app?
Uhh, this has already been possible – I am not sure how but remember my brother telling me about it. I’m not a whatsapp user so not sure of the specifics, but something about sending the image as a file and somehow bypassing the default compression settings that are applied to inbound photos.
He has also used this to share movies to whatsapp groups, and files 1Gb+.
Like I said, I never used whatsapp, but I know 100% this isn’t a “brand new feature”, my brother literally showed me him doing it, like… 5 months ago?
Martin, what happened to those: 12 Comments (https://www.ghacks.net/chatgpt-gets-schooled-by-princeton-university/#comments). Is there a specific justifiable reason why they were deleted?
Hmm, it looks like the gHacks website database is faulty, and not populating threads with their relevant cosponsoring posts.
The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk that it’s about to be deleted from my ‘daily reads’.
It’s really like “Press Release as re-written by some d*ck for clicks…poorly.” And the subjects are laughable. Can’t wait for “How to search for files on Windows”.
> The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk…
Sadly, I have to agree.
Only Martin and Ashwin are worth subscribing to.
Especially Emre Çitak and Shaun are the worst ones.
If ghacks.net intended “Clickbait”, it would mark the end of Ghacks Technology News.
Ghacks doesn’t need crappy clickbaits. Clearly separate articles from newer authors (perhaps AIs and external sales person or external advertising man) as just “Advertisements”!
We, the subscribers of Ghacks, urge Martin to make a decision.
because nevermore wants to “monetize” on every aspect of human life…
“Threads” is like the Walmart of Social Media.
How hard can it be to clone a twitter version of that as well? They’re slow.
Yes, why not mention how large the HD files can be?
Why, not mention what version of WhatsApp is needed?
These omissions make the article feel so bare. If not complete.
Sorry posted on the wrong page.
such a long article for such a simple matter. Worthless article ! waste of time
I already do this by attaching them via the ‘Document’ option.
I don’t know what’s going on here at Ghacks but it’s obvious that something is broken, comments are being mixed whatever the article, I am unable to find some of my later posts neither. :S
Quoting the article,
“As users gain popularity, the value of their tokens may increase, allowing investors to reap rewards.”
Besides, beyond the thrill and privacy risks or not, the point is to know how you gain popularity, be it on social sites as everywhere in life. Is it by being authentic, by remaining faithful to ourselves or is it to have this particular skill which is to understand what a majority likes, just like politicians, those who’d deny to the maximum extent compatible with their ideological partnership, in order to grab as many of the voters they can?
I see the very concept of this Friend.tech as unhealthy, propagating what is already an increasing flaw : the quest for fame. I won’t be the only one to count himself out, definitely.
@John G. is right : my comment was posted on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/23/what-is-friend-tech/] and it appears there but as well here at [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/08/how-to-follow-everyone-on-threads/]
This has been lasting for several days. Fix it or at least provide some explanations if you don’t mind.
> Google Chrome is following in Safari’s footsteps by introducing a new feature that allows users to move the Chrome address bar to the bottom of the screen, enhancing user accessibility and interaction.
Firefox did this long before Safari.
Basically they’ll do anything except fair royalties.