Pixel Launcher could soon give you the freedom to choose your own web search engine
The Pixel Launcher in the latest Android 14 build includes a hidden setting that lets you choose your default system-wide search engine.
You're viewing a single thread.
This is a good welcome and I'd take it, despite all the hate it gets, I like Pixel Launcher because it is smooth as fuck, but this is mainly because Android stopped supporting 3rd party launchers... The joke of support that we have nowadays is... Well that, a fucking joke lol.
Anyway Pixel Launcher lacks a lot of stuff to be usable for many... But god, it is also one of the few that freaking has a feature to automatically show the keyboard when you pull up the app drawer, then you can quickly type down for apps... Why is that so hard to implement? Even iOS has a quick search function...
Anyway, as I said, PL is good, but tools like Pixel Launcher Extended are excellent, sadly it is stuck at Android 13 at the moment.
Android stopped supporting 3rd party launchers...
Um, what? I'm using one in my Pixel 8 Pro.
With downgraded animations for sure...
It is not that bad, but it is a bad implementation, I could use them too in my custom ROM (I can't with MIUI or HyperOS) but I never want to use them, that if you use full screen gestures ofc, I think they work better with Android buttons.
How? I tried, but 3rd party launchers work worse because they load up after you close an app. Pixel Launcher has privileged permissions and can have smooth animations
I use Lawnchair and don't have this problem. I also didn't do anything special, just set it up as the default launcher.
Do you use the legacy three buttons navigation?
For the bottom navigation bar? Yep!
Okay, so that's why it's working fine for you!
As soon as you enable the new gesture navigation, 3rd party launchers will "break"
It sounds like the launcher app is killed while in the background. Make sure that the app is allowed to run in the background and not have any battery optimization enabled.
It's not killed, it's that gesture navigation expects the launcher to be already rendered behind the foreground app, and 3rd party launchers can't do that
I see, sorry for the noise.
No worries mate :)
They (kinda) work on Samsung now if you turn off the animations. Regardless, the custom launcher on Android is dead.
Well I don't prefer gesture navigation but to suggest custom launchers on Android are dead is some of the most absurd shit I've read in a while.
Not really "stopped supporting", but really made changes in a way that made non system launchers unable to integrate with QuickStep (The app switcher of android). The end result is uneven animations when moving from an app to the home screen, or from the home screen to the app switcher.
You might not notice if you use button navigation or turn off animations. But I don't really consider those solutions, not to mention that it can be even worse on pixel tablet with the transient taskbar. Where the taskbar is embedded in animations with the PL, and if you're using another launcher, it seems to cause all sorts of problems when doing certain things like going from the home screen to the app switcher. I actually had to move from button navigation (which I prefer on larger screens compared to smaller ones. Coupled with androids lack of gestures like on iPad) back to the default because the taskbar would just constantly disappear.
this is mainly because Android stopped supporting 3rd party launchers.
What do you mean? I've always used my own launcher. I've never used the pixel launcher - not because I have anything against it, but because I like Nova better. L
Nova Launcher Prime ftw