Happy Google I/O week, my fellow Android-appreciating animal! While we await El Googlenheim to drop all kinds of attention-grabbing new goodies on our suspiciously greasy domes, I’ve bought a trio of vital truths so that you can chew over:
One of the perfect components about Android is how straightforward the working system makes it to take whole management of your expertise and make your telephone work any approach you need.
One of the perfect methods to harness that energy is by benefiting from a customized Android launcher — an app that replaces your normal house display screen setup with a extra environment friendly and customizable atmosphere.
And probably the greatest Android launchers on the market simply bought an impressed new replace that provides much more oomph into that chance.
It’s my private favourite Android launcher of the second, in reality, and an app that is one in every of my high secrets and techniques to a extra productivity-minded Android interface association. And Goog almighty, lemme inform ya: This newest addition inside its digital partitions will actually ship your effectivity hovering.Best of all? You can get it up and working on any machine this second — no new Android variations or fancy-schmancy Google-I/O-announced goodness required.Let me present you ways.[Get Googley tips in your inbox every Friday with my Android Intelligence newsletter. Three time-saving tips as soon as you sign up!]Your new Android widget wondersFirst issues first: The launcher itself is a stunning little ditty referred to as Niagara Launcher. If you have adopted my musings for lengthy, you have in all probability heard me wax poetic about it earlier than. (It’s a frequent matter of dialog and adulation in my Android Intelligence Platinum useful resource group, the place it is also now grow to be a built-in perk of membership.) I’ve fallen arduous for the intelligent and unconventional method Niagara brings to the Android house display screen, and regardless of what number of instances I toy round with different setups, I at all times appear to finish up again in its loving embrace.At its core, Niagara replaces the usual Android house display screen atmosphere with a easy listing of your mostly accessed apps. Everything else lives inside a scrolling alphabetical menu that you simply pull up by swiping alongside both aspect of the display screen. JRThe launcher is all about simplicity, by design, and eliminating all of the efficiency-harming muddle most house screens are weighed down by. To that finish, the system helps only a single on-screen widget at its uppermost edge — a part of its mission to encourage considerate configuration and maintain solely the stuff you truly work together with usually entrance and middle.Now, although, Niagara is providing up a brand new solution to put much more pertinent data at your fingertips — with out abandoning its minimalist, focus-centric philosophy.It’s an choice to stack a number of widgets on high of one another in that one single area, thus providing you with on-demand entry to extra helpful data whereas nonetheless sustaining the launcher’s clutter-free atmosphere.See? JRNow, if that appears acquainted, it ought to: An analogous kind of widget-stacking setup confirmed up throughout the mobile-tech divide on the iOS aspect some time in the past. But straightforward as it might be to jot down one thing off as “an iPhone thing,” keep in mind: That form of inspiration-borrowing is not at all times a nasty factor. Heck, Apple’s very adoption of widgets within the first place was a blatant Android-copying transfer. But by bringing widgets to the iPhone-totin’ plenty, Apple not directly pressured Google to begin treating widgets on Android as a precedence once more — after years of agonizing neglect. And that, in flip, has empowered builders to provide you with stuff like this. At the top of the day, competitors is an efficient factor for us all.And that is very evident within the delight of utilizing stacked widgets inside Niagara Launcher, particularly for those who go about it in a deliberate approach and actually take the time to contemplate which particular widgets would most successfully improve your effectivity in that association.For me — for the second, a minimum of — I’ve added two new widgets into my rotation to enhance my color-changing, Material-You-enabled clock:
First, with a single swipe to the left on the Niagara widget space, I can now see a listing of my newest duties from Todoist — a top-notch Android organizational app and probably the greatest job managers round. After years of sticking to a streamlined Google Calendar setup for all of my duties and reminders, I’ve been enjoying round with utilizing it to trace sure forms of private and work duties. And having these objects a single swipe away makes it blissfully straightforward to inspect what random chores I must be excited about at any given second.
Second, with single swipe to the appropriate on that space (or two swipes to the left; it is a round rotation), I can now see the native Android 13 battery standing widget. I’ve by no means actually used that widget earlier than, however I’ve discovered it is a useful solution to rapidly look and see how a lot battery life is left on my telephone itself in addition to another linked devices — each the exact % and an estimate of my remaining real-world use time.
Getting began with the brand new Niagara Launcher widget stack setup could not be a lot easier, both. Just obtain Niagara from the Play Store for those who do not have already got it, then open it up and observe the prompts to set it up and set it as your default system launcher. (If you ever need to change that, you may at all times simply uninstall it — or search your system settings for the phrase “home” to discover a swap.) Once you are gazing your shiny new house display screen setup, press and maintain your finger onto the generic default clock on the high of the display screen and choose the “Add custom widget” choice. (You also can flip the toggle subsequent to “Show clock,” if you wish to flip that default clock off.) Select no matter widget you need, then observe the steps so as to add it onto your own home display screen.All that is left is to press and maintain your finger onto that freshly added widget and faucet the “Add custom widget” choice as soon as extra to create your swipeable stack. When you choose a second widget, Niagara will ask if you wish to create a stack. Tap the button to substantiate, and growth: Your first official Android widget stack is alive and nicely, and all you have gotta do is swipe your finger horizontally on that space of the display screen to discover it.If you need to add one other widget into the combination, observe those self same steps once more and choose whichever widget your Android-adoring coronary heart needs. I’d recommend two or three widgets because the optimum quantity, as that retains all the things not more than a single swipe away and avoids creating any counterproductive muddle.Pretty nifty, would not ya say? Niagara Launcher is free to make use of, too, although it does require a $10-a-year (or $30 lifetime) improve to its Pro model if you wish to keep entry to the stackable widgets and different superior choices. If all that stuff enhances your effectivity as a lot because it does mine, it is fairly straightforward to justify that as cash nicely spent.And, notably, it does not require any method of maddening ready or I/O-announcement lusting in any respect.Learn all kinds of off-the-beaten-path Android time-savers with my Android Intelligence publication. Three new issues to attempt each Friday!
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