What smartphone app do you interact with the most? Hint: it’s not Gmail, Gemini, a messaging service, or your contacts list. You have to use this piece of software to get to all those.
Give up? You interact with your phone’s launcher more than anything else. The launcher is the app that — surprise — launches all your other apps, and it has a huge impact on how your phone looks and feels during day-to-day use. Most people stick with their phone’s stock home screen and the customizations the manufacturer allows, but Niagara Launcher‘s new Theming Update wants to make it pain-free to find something that lets you equip your phone with the perfect starting point for you. Here’s what it’s all about.
One app to run them all
And with a quick touch, change it
One of the issues with custom launchers is that they take a little getting used to, and not everybody wants to spend hours adjusting them. So, even when people test entirely new home screen apps, it’s often easier to stick to the one your phone came with. Niagara Launcher — which makes today’s huge smartphones incredibly easier to use with one hand — is releasing a big update that aims to give you a wide range of options to choose from out of the box, which provides plenty of inspiration to make granular changes that fit your needs and wants.
The new Theme Collection includes 12 slick-looking home screens, and more are on the way. An intuitive trip to the Niagara Settings → Look → Themes dialog pulls up a sliding selection of appearances to choose from, and one tap applies them. The devs are hard at work expanding the feature, and eventually, you’ll be able to quickly access the Niagara community’s vast library of custom home screen themes.
But wait, there’s more
Material 3 Expressive, eat your heart out
Called Anycons, Niagara’s new icon offerings maintain the launcher’s neat look and bring relative uniformity to the wide collection of apps you already have. The currently three flavors aren’t strictly limited to cosmetically updating just a few popular services, either; They can recognize some 100,000 apps and apply categorically themed styles, so nothing looks out of place.
Even more subtle changes tie the whole experience together. A variety of updates like small (but meaningful) animations make the updated Niagara launcher look and feel every bit as polished as what huge phone makers spend billions on designing. There’s also a much-improved intro that helps new users get the full picture of what the launcher is and what it can do.
Niagara isn’t stopping there. It introduced what’s called the Feature Board, which is a streamlined suggestion and bug report platform. And the real kicker? Devs actually monitor and place importance on what users vote on and have to say, which doesn’t always appear to be the case with the biggest names in smartphone development.
Finally, for those who like to minimize their phone’s intrusion into daily life, Niagara indicated its Usage Breaker will continue to see refinement. Usage Breaker is a digital wellbeing-focused feature that stops you from checking messages when you don’t have any, or doomscrolling to the point of fatigue. The devs have acknowledged that it works better for some than others (because phone use is a highly individualized activity), which is the kind of assurance you love to see from the people who write your phone’s most important software.
The Theming Update beta is now available through Niagara Launcher’s community channels. As everything’s confirmed to be ironed out, it’ll release gradually over the next few weeks. If you’ve never tried a custom launcher, this is a great one to start with.
