Customization has always been one of the main attractions and selling points of the Android operating system. There have been times when rival operating systems like iOS had something that Android didn’t—things like iMessage or iPhone-exclusive apps. But what Android always had was customization, and loyal Android users took great pride in it. So what if my text bubbles are a different color? At least I can customize my Android phone to my heart’s content.
While Android offered many ways to tweak and customize your phone, the ability to change the home screen with a third-party launcher was extremely cool. Users could change the look and feel of their devices without having to purchase a new phone, and it wasn’t just about changing the look and feel of the smartphone. Some launchers were faster than the default system launcher and offered better performance. Some had improved accessibility, and others had better user interfaces with useful features that were not available in the default Android experience.
Those days were, of course, great, and while a lot of people still use a third-party launcher today, the experience is becoming less ideal by the day. Smartphone makers have made it less easy, if not difficult, to change the default home screen on your Android device. Even if you can manage to change it, the experience leaves a lot to be desired.
On most Android phones, changing the default home screen with a third-party launcher often breaks the animations in the app switcher section. Sometimes the navigation gestures don’t work, and features like screenshots may go missing. With Android’s open-source nature turning more and more into a “still open but with a lot of barriers” garden, support for third-party launchers is suffering even more.
To fix that, the developers of some of the biggest and most widely used third-party launchers have decided to conduct a huge survey. The idea is to gather data on the issues faced by users when trying to install or use a third-party launcher, and they intend to share this data with the Google team at an event in October.
Launchers like Nova, Lawnchair, Niagara Launcher, and Smart Launcher are on this list. Smart Launcher, recently on X (formerly Twitter), shared a direct link to the survey, asking users to share their feedback about their experience with third-party launchers and if there are any issues they would like to see addressed.
Whether Google decides to use this data to improve the third-party launcher experience on Android remains to be seen. But if it does happen, it will surely benefit a lot of people who still use a third-party launcher on their Android phones.