Tag: LAUNCHER

LauncherPro, one of the most popular third-party launchers for Android, has just received an update, taking it to version 0.8.4. This update brings two new features, and lots of fixes. First off, users of the paid LauncherPro Plus have gotten a new LauncherPro widget, this time for Gmail. This widget matches the style of all the other LauncherPro widgets (for Contacts, Calendar, Twitter, and ...

Picking an Android launcher is tricky business. Most of them have so many features and config options that it takes a matter of weeks to learn all of their intricacies -- and you can't possibly know which one suits your needs without trying out a few! HeLauncher, by offering no less than 10 different home screen styles, gives you a simpler way of finding a home screen that suits your style. ...

One feature I still miss when switching between Chrome and Firefox is support for bookmark keywords, which make launching sites from the address bar a breeze. Chrome's Omnibar does a fairly good job of finding what we want to launch from standard input (e.g. gmail), but it would be nice to have straight-up keywords (like gm). Sebastian showed you one method using custom search engines -- but ...

Android's greatest, platform-defining feature is customizability. The entire operating system is open-sourced, APIs are laid bare, and almost every user-facing part of the OS can be modified by apps. There's no surprise, then, that replacement apps exist for almost every part of Android's stock functionality. In turn, to complete the circle of life, new versions of Android incorporate the ...

LauncherPro, the fan-favorite Android home screen replacement, has been updated! This is not the much-hyped complete rewrite of the codebase -- that's coming soon! -- but it does bring one of the most-requested features: home screen transitions. Rather than tell you all about them, we've made a video that shows off the four new Compiz-like transitions -- it's embedded after the break. Suffice ...

Sitting like rough and tawdry monarchs atop of the Android home screen and app launcher pile are LauncherPro and ADW.Launcher. We've reviewed Zeam Launcher, and looked at Go Launcher and QuickDesk, but somehow the two big boys have always escaped our critical eye. Well, no more! Today we're going to look at ADW.Launcher. It's a free download, but there's an 'EX' version that will cost you about ...

It's always amazed me how phones, with processors that are hundreds of times more powerful than early computers, can lag. You know what I mean: head into your address book and try to find a contact while your phone is still booting up, or loading a website. It's pathetic, really. One solution is to put faster and faster CPUs in phones, but the alternative is to strip out some of the heavier ...

Google Chrome's right-click context menu is a very handy place to have access to add-on functionality. From element blocking in AdBlock to creating short URLs for the pages you browse, there are tons of extensions which offer two-click access this way. One handy new context menu extension is Apps list, which (you guessed it) displays your installed Chrome Web Apps and lets you launch them ...

If opening Google Chrome's new tab page just to fire up an app feels a bit too clunky for your liking, check out a new extension from Google itself: App Launcher. Once installed, you'll have access to a drop down menu which lists all your apps in alphabetical order -- unlike previously reviewed AppJump Launcher, which doesn't appear to list them in any particular order. Google's offering also ...

There are quite a few homescreen app launchers for Android; the best-known ones, ADW and LauncherPro, are very powerful but tend to be a tad on the chunky side. When you're in the middle of doing something and need to quickly switch to another task, you may not always like to go via your cluttered homescreen. Enter QuickDesk: this quick utility is basically like a single homescreen page, with ...

The Chrome Web Store is finally here, and many of you probably have a handful of apps installed -- if for no other reason than a little eye candy on your new tab page. If you'd prefer a way to launch your apps that offers a bit more convenience and customization, check out the AppJump Launcher extension. In addition to adding a handy drop-down panel from which you can launch your Chrome Apps, ...

While you may not want to hack your Froyo smartphone to install the semi-wonky Gingerbread keyboard, there's a much more tame mod you can now download directly from the Android Market. MoDaCo's Paul O'Brien -- who did a stint here at Download Squad -- has released the Gingerbread Launcher. It's a snap to install; just grab the Launcher from the Market (the QR code is after the break), install ...

Now that my Android device is cluttered with apps and games, I figured it was time to tidy up my home screen -- and Go Launcher is up to the task. It's a highly customizable home replacement which supports app folders (like iOS), and widgets, multiple pages, and a huge number of user-configurable settings. Tap the grid icon and Go displays all your apps in a paged 4x4 grid -- which you can ...

Before Windows 7 came out, I used to love Launchy. I'm a keyboard-centric kind of guy, and a keyboard launcher fits in perfectly with my workflow. Launchy wasn't the only app I tried; I think I went through just about every major keyboard launcher for Windows and quite a few minor ones as well (including several AutoHotkey scripts). And then Windows 7 came out, with its shiny new Start menu. No ...

In news that makes McAfee's svchost.exe mishap look like a sunny, smiley walk in the park, Symantec and its Norton suite of security tools has found World of Warcraft to be malware. Countless installations of World of Warcraft were destroyed until it was rapidly fixed on Thursday last week. In fairness, it was quite an easy mistake to make: Symantec uses human analysts to flag programs with ...