In the past, third-party launcher apps often provided a superior experience to the stock launcher found on most Android phones. With the revamp of the recent apps screen and the introduction of gestures in Android 9 Pie, though, third-party launchers were put at a disadvantage as these new experiences were integrated into the stock launcher app. Over time, Google has tried to make the third-party launcher experience not so terrible when using gestures, and they’ve actually started to succeed at this recently.
If you’ve used a recent Nova Launcher beta release on a Google Pixel phone in the last few months, you might have noticed the fluid animations when using gesture navigation. Unfortunately, you won’t see these same animations when using Nova Launcher on any other device, at least for now. To understand why we first need to briefly explain what separates third-party launchers like Nova Launcher from stock launchers like Google’s Pixel Launcher.
Google first introduced gesture navigation in Android 9 Pie. In order to make gestures feel as fluid as possible, Google needed to make app transitions look seamless. They also wanted to let users access their entire app list from the recent apps screen. To do both of these, Google decided to move the code that handles the recent apps screen from Android’s SystemUI to Launcher3, Android’s open-source launcher app that most OEM stock launchers are forked from. Thus, the QuickStep component was born, and because of its privileged nature, Android only allows the preinstalled launcher app to be set as the recent apps provider. This can be overridden with root access if the third-party launcher supports it, but for most users, this means that a third-party launcher app will always rely on the stock launcher to handle gestures and the recent apps screen. The result, as most of you have probably experienced, can be a bit janky, with transitions that don’t look fluid and seamless. Unless you use a Google Pixel phone. On most Google Pixel phones, there exists an API that third-party launchers can use to make the transition from an app back to the home screen look much more native. Some third-party launcher apps like Niagara Launcher and the aforementioned Nova Launcher are taking advantage of this API, though the latter only includes it in its in-development v7 builds. When this API is used, the third-party launcher app receives an intent and a callback from QuickStep whenever the user performs a swipe to go home gesture. The third-party launcher can then hint to the gesture system how to animate the window as it minimizes onto an app icon.
Here’s an example of what this looks like in Niagara Launcher, courtesy of the launcher’s developer 8bitpit:
Video Player
If you’ve used a recent Nova Launcher beta release on a Google Pixel phone in the last few months, you might have noticed the fluid animations when using gesture navigation. Unfortunately, you won’t see these same animations when using Nova Launcher on any other device, at least for now. To understand why we first need to briefly explain what separates third-party launchers like Nova Launcher from stock launchers like Google’s Pixel Launcher.
Google first introduced gesture navigation in Android 9 Pie. In order to make gestures feel as fluid as possible, Google needed to make app transitions look seamless. They also wanted to let users access their entire app list from the recent apps screen. To do both of these, Google decided to move the code that handles the recent apps screen from Android’s SystemUI to Launcher3, Android’s open-source launcher app that most OEM stock launchers are forked from. Thus, the QuickStep component was born, and because of its privileged nature, Android only allows the preinstalled launcher app to be set as the recent apps provider. This can be overridden with root access if the third-party launcher supports it, but for most users, this means that a third-party launcher app will always rely on the stock launcher to handle gestures and the recent apps screen. The result, as most of you have probably experienced, can be a bit janky, with transitions that don’t look fluid and seamless. Unless you use a Google Pixel phone. On most Google Pixel phones, there exists an API that third-party launchers can use to make the transition from an app back to the home screen look much more native. Some third-party launcher apps like Niagara Launcher and the aforementioned Nova Launcher are taking advantage of this API, though the latter only includes it in its in-development v7 builds. When this API is used, the third-party launcher app receives an intent and a callback from QuickStep whenever the user performs a swipe to go home gesture. The third-party launcher can then hint to the gesture system how to animate the window as it minimizes onto an app icon.
Here’s an example of what this looks like in Niagara Launcher, courtesy of the launcher’s developer 8bitpit:
Video Player
Comments
Post a Comment