# Best Launcher for AOSP Roms?



## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

I am currently using go launcher with thundershed 1.3

I'm thrilled with the rom. It's my first try at AOSP. I was using go launcher with bamf11 but I wanted a change.

I have been reading that many people prefer ADW. Which launcher do you like best and as specifically as possible could you explain why. "Smooth as butter" doesnt really say anything so please try to refrain.

THANKS!


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## thisismalhotra (Sep 14, 2011)

when I was using thunderbolt it was always ADW ex for me

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

I prefer Launcher7 Now, only two screens. One screen is the app drawer, the other is nice large tiles for whatever apps you choose. Nice way of presenting the apps you want without a bunch of small icons. The app drawer also lets you jump around alphabetically. If you have a ton of apps you just tap a letter, then select the letter you want to jump to.


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## miketb34 (Oct 27, 2011)

I love LPP but I'm currently using ADW EX. They update it more often and I personally love the features, but both are awesome launchers.


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## morrowa2 (Aug 4, 2011)

Agree with Launcher 7. Simple elegance of WP7 but retaining the functionality of Android (tethering etc.) I'm using Thundershed as well, installed Launcher 7, then disabled Go Launcher and it's components using Root explorer. Add WP7 contacts, and WP lockscreen, and you've pretty much got an WP7 phone, minus the fancy hubs. The hubs are doable, but I haven't figured out how to do it.


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## sgtguthrie (Jun 7, 2011)

Go Launcher ex 100% (until ics, then I like nova). There's the go facebook and twitter ad-ons for widgets, or I like colorize widgets too (wizz for ics). This is coming from someone who used LPP since it was in beta. Sucks that it's been abandoned...

sent via rooted THUNDERBOLT with Tapatalk


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## nefariusmdk (Oct 7, 2011)

ADW:
+ great for battery life
- not that many customizations - just themes and icons.

GoLauncher:
+ visually more exciting
- drains the battery terribly
- too many extras to download (weather widgets, calendar widgets, etc. if you want all that)


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## mfinlay04 (Jun 8, 2011)

Zeam launcher. Smallest footprint ftw

Sent from my ADR6400L using RootzWiki


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

Since battery life is not a problem for me (extended battery with chargers upstairs, downstairs, both offices, and both cars) sounds like i'll stick with go launcer. I like all the options. I also noticed that adw has terrible reviews in mp lately.


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

Will any of the launchers allow the home pages to rotate without individually drawing each icon? I would love to rotate the home page but I have 16 icons on it so when go launcher rotates the icons pop back in groups of 3 or 4 not all at once as I would.like.


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

recDNA said:


> Will any of the launchers allow the home pages to rotate without individually drawing each icon? I would love to rotate the home page but I have 16 icons on it so when go launcher rotates the icons pop back in groups of 3 or 4 not all at once as I would.like.


Launcher 7 can rotate the tiles individually. If you use 1*1 tiles each tile just spins around in place as you rotate the phone, they don't shift around to new positions. The larger 1*2 and 2*1 tiles will rotate in place at 180* increments.


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

Couple screenshots of what I mean. First shot is the phone in Portrait, second is in Landscape. If you keep rotating completely upside down, the calendar and photos would rotate around also.

Sent from my ADR6400L using RootzWiki

Edit: Even better, a video-


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

Xanth said:


> Launcher 7 can rotate the tiles individually. If you use 1*1 tiles each tile just spins around in place as you rotate the phone, they don't shift around to new positions. The larger 1*2 and 2*1 tiles will rotate in place at 180* increments.


I love that the 1x1 tiles just rotate but I have a 4x2 tile (beweather clock/weather) that I would want to rotate 90 degrees as do the 1x1 tiles. In fact it is even MORE essential for the bigger tiles to rotate since they aren't just icons. Its hard to read time and date and temperature sideways.

Thanks for going to all the trouble to post the pictures and video! They were very helpful and saves me the bother of trying to set up that launcher.


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

I just started playing with this launcher here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ss.launcher&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5zcy5sYXVuY2hlciJd

Has a lot of options and can be confusing to setup, but allows separate Portrait and Landscape widget layouts so you can arrange the screen how you want it to appear in each mode. Eliminates the weird stretching of elements. Very cool launcher once you spend some time with it.


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## mrtonk (Oct 11, 2011)

Pardon my ignorance, but it is my understanding that AOSP ROMS are essentially meant to present Android the way that Google designed it. Meanwhile, every ROM I see uses some sort of 3rd party launcher. Isn't there a "native" launcher within Android? I can't imagine they designed it without a launcher built-in. Why aren't there "naked launcher" ROMs?

Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk

"I went back to Sense when I realized how much work I was putting into making AOSP look like Sense."


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

mrtonk said:


> Pardon my ignorance, but it is my understanding that AOSP ROMS are essentially meant to present Android the way that Google designed it. Meanwhile, every ROM I see uses some sort of 3rd party launcher. Isn't there a "native" launcher within Android? I can't imagine they designed it without a launcher built-in. Why aren't there "naked launcher" ROMs?
> 
> Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk
> 
> "I went back to Sense when I realized how much work I was putting into making AOSP look like Sense."


I believe there is a Native launcher so to speak, but it is often removed. I've accidentally frozen my add-on launchers, nothing comes up in their place. I imagine the native launcher is what appears on Virtual Android Devices, perhaps it could be grabbed from the development kit?


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## padraic (Jul 21, 2011)

mrtonk said:


> Pardon my ignorance, but it is my understanding that AOSP ROMS are essentially meant to present Android the way that Google designed it. Meanwhile, every ROM I see uses some sort of 3rd party launcher. Isn't there a "native" launcher within Android? I can't imagine they designed it without a launcher built-in. Why aren't there "naked launcher" ROMs?
> 
> Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk
> 
> "I went back to Sense when I realized how much work I was putting into making AOSP look like Sense."


Stock AOSP launchers have never had all the bells and whistles of 3rd-party alternatives, which is why they have always been eschewed. Their real death knewll was probably when CyanogenMod decided to scrap the stock launcher (when still developing Froyo, I recall) in favor of ADW. That said, I thought that the "OMGB" or whatever was just a straight vanilla AOSP Gingerbread build; that would have the "stock" launcher.

tl;dr - the "stock" launcher is never included in anyone's ROM because it's just not very good.


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

Xanth said:


> I just started playing with this launcher here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ss.launcher&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5zcy5sYXVuY2hlciJd
> 
> Has a lot of options and can be confusing to setup, but allows separate Portrait and Landscape widget layouts so you can arrange the screen how you want it to appear in each mode. Eliminates the weird stretching of elements. Very cool launcher once you spend some time with it.


The stretching doesnt bother me. The redraws do. Have you tried going from home (with lots of icons) portrait to home landscape to see if all the widgets and apps come back together or if they are redrawn in groups? I hate waiting that extra half second for the redraws.


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

recDNA said:


> The stretching doesnt bother me. The redraws do. Have you tried going from home (with lots of icons) portrait to home landscape to see if all the widgets and apps come back together or if they are redrawn in groups? I hate waiting that extra half second for the redraws.


They all seem to come back together from what I see. There is a slight delay before the display mode change, however each view is already drawn to the desktop before the rotate animation even finishes, so it is pretty seamless appearing.

I stuck an animated wallpaper behind the desktop with a bunch of elements, you can see the rotate delay at around 25s:


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## CHP (Jul 13, 2011)

If you want a fast, low memory, launcher, try FTL launcher. Fastest launcher I've ever used. Not too many settings, but that's the goal of the launcher.

Sent from my ADR6400L using RootzWiki


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## srs731 (Jun 15, 2011)

Xanth said:


> I just started playing with this launcher here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ss.launcher&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5zcy5sYXVuY2hlciJd
> 
> Has a lot of options and can be confusing to setup, but allows separate Portrait and Landscape widget layouts so you can arrange the screen how you want it to appear in each mode. Eliminates the weird stretching of elements. Very cool launcher once you spend some time with it.


thanks for this recommendation. I have been advid ADWEX but this launcher is really cool! And really snappy. Time to learn all the settings!

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

25 seconds? That's forever.


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## ianolson91 (Feb 15, 2012)

I have used almost every launcher and i found ADW Ex to just work the best with cyanogenmod based roms


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## wastedmatter (Feb 22, 2012)

Out of the big 3 (ADW EX, LauncherPro, GoLauncher) I use ADW EX the most. It has the best balance between features, performance and battery life. LauncherPro seems the fastest and obviously GoLauncher is the most bloated.


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

recDNA said:


> 25 seconds? That's forever.


The rotation is around the 25s point in the video, it doesn't take 25s to rotate.

Sent from my ADR6400L using RootzWiki


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## z28 justin (Jul 11, 2011)

I use go launcher. It is free and has lots of free widgets, I like the calendar widget most


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## number5toad (Sep 13, 2011)

Zeam for me


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## schrochem (Jul 27, 2011)

I use go launcher on liquid 3.2 and it's snappy enough and hasn't caused any battery issues.
However, I'm open to trying the others again. One thing I like is to have a 5X5 grid and reduce the icons to around 65 and have no labels.
I also like the ability to change the app icon to whatever I like.
Are those available in these other launchers?


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

I don't get sst launcher at all. Is it even possible to create a page that looks like this? If so how?







I don't see any option to create a dock nor open an app drawer.


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## theMichael (Aug 26, 2011)

swear by launcher pro, im more of a minimalist though so i dont need any widgets or anything, just for it to be smoooooth.


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

schrochem said:


> I use go launcher on liquid 3.2 and it's snappy enough and hasn't caused any battery issues.
> However, I'm open to trying the others again. One thing I like is to have a 5X5 grid and reduce the icons to around 65 and have no labels.
> I also like the ability to change the app icon to whatever I like.
> Are those available in these other launchers?


Is there a way in go launcher to delay switches between portrait and landscape for a couple of seconds?


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## schrochem (Jul 27, 2011)

recDNA said:


> Is there a way in go launcher to delay switches between portrait and landscape for a couple of seconds?


nope.


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## mad96 (Aug 23, 2011)

Out of many launchers thru trial and error, I found go launcher to be extremely well on all around reliability and performance, not to mention bckup all your texts good for crack flashing LOL


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## ryanstfl (Aug 4, 2011)

I really wanna switch from LauncherPro as I feel like it could do so much more with very little work. I mean, native folders with an ICS look would make me so much happier. Instead if I have to run a separate application for that. Oh well. My biggest thing is an app drawer which I can hide icons, I don't need much more than that.

I heard Zeam is also great!


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

And sst launcher cannot have app drawer or dock?


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## wastedmatter (Feb 22, 2012)

schrochem said:


> I use go launcher on liquid 3.2 and it's snappy enough and hasn't caused any battery issues.
> However, I'm open to trying the others again. One thing I like is to have a 5X5 grid and reduce the icons to around 65 and have no labels.
> I also like the ability to change the app icon to whatever I like.
> Are those available in these other launchers?


Yes


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## Xanth (Sep 15, 2011)

recDNA said:


> And sst launcher cannot have app drawer or dock?


It has an app drawer page, to add one you hit Menu -> Pages -> New Page -> Application Drawer.

A true dock however, it does not have. You would have to re-create the dock icons on each cover page you create.


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## recDNA (Oct 25, 2011)

How


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## Mattes (Sep 2, 2011)

ryanstfl said:


> I really wanna switch from LauncherPro as I feel like it could do so much more with very little work. I mean, native folders with an ICS look would make me so much happier. Instead if I have to run a separate application for that. Oh well. My biggest thing is an app drawer which I can hide icons, I don't need much more than that.
> 
> I heard Zeam is also great!


Go-launcher is pretty good at hiding icons  QQ launcher does to, But on MIUI or ADW launchers I freeze apps I don't want to see. But for the least amount of work I recommend go


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