Summary
- Niagara Launcher now offers backups for settings, which is essential for recreating custom setups on new devices.
- The latest update also includes a Usage Breaker feature to manage screen time more efficiently.
- Devs, mostly students, are now more devoted to improving Niagara Launcher after graduating.
A launcher plays an important role on our favorite Android devices, and sometimes, the stock solution provided by the device manufacturer just doesn’t cut it. Enter custom launchers, which are created by enthusiasts who stick to the founding principles of their app. Peter Huber’s Niagara Launcher is one of the best modern examples that exude the simplicity and convenience it has offered from the very beginning. Now, development is taking a drastic turn with the latest winter update.
Niagara Launcher offers a clean and minimal home screen with an alphabetized app drawer and swift access to a few widgets, all to minimize distractions. The app’s small team of developers has been working on a few critical new additions, including a usage breaker feature to improve digital wellbeing and backups for your launcher settings.
First off, you won’t need to set up Niagara afresh anymore if you’re switching phones. Backups are essential for recreating complicated custom setups, and Niagara finally supports this feature. Tucked away in Niagara Settings under Backup and Restore, you’ll find an option to create a small configuration file the launcher can use to restore your settings on another device. Interestingly, this feature is totally independent of Android’s integrated cloud backups since the devs found it unreliable. Backups are a basic necessity, and available to both free and Pro-tier users, but they are still in early preview at this time.
Manage screen time efficiently with this update
Devs are more devoted to Niagara, too
Secondly, we are happy to see detailed efforts and surveys from the Niagara team are now helping manage your screen time. We spoke at length about the limitations of Android’s Digital Wellbeing initiative, such as app timers and an immediate option to extend the limit, negating utility. Niagara’s latest update adds a feature called Usage Breaker.
Related
Niagara Launcher’s creator just wants to make you feel better about using your phone
Minimalism makes a mark
You first select the apps you find distracting, and after a set interval, you’ll see a reminder informing you how long this app session has run, encouraging you to take a break. The dev team hopes this conscious approach will serve users better than Android’s app limits and related workarounds, especially when you’re doing something important in an otherwise distracting app.
Talking about this new addition to the app and Niagara’s general direction with digital wellbeing efforts, the app’s creator, Peter Huber, told Android Police, “Right now, I view these features as a sort of sandbox—our goal is to gather feedback and assess their effectiveness. If they’re well-received but demand more precise control, they could potentially outgrow the scope of a launcher. It highly depends on what our users want.”
Lastly, the devs, who are mostly students, shared that they are all graduating soon, and that means they’ll spend more time developing Niagara Launcher. The winter update is rolling out through community channels like Discord first, but it will be available through the Play Store as well in the coming weeks.
