Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Every year when I set up my new Pixel phone, I have a brief moment of doubt about sticking with the default Pixel Launcher. I think about all the great Android launchers I’ve tried in the past, all the interesting approaches to finding and interacting with my apps and widgets, and then I accept my fate and stick with the default option, again and again.
It’s not that I think the Pixel Launcher is perfect or that the other options don’t have excellent features I envy. Quite the contrary. But there’s something comforting in Google’s approach, so here’s why I stick with it despite knowing there are better options out there.
Why do you use the Pixel Launcher on your Pixel phone? 20 votes It has all the features that I need. 40 % I'm too lazy to try something else. 10 % I didn't know you could switch launchers. 0 % I don't use the Pixel Launcher. 50 %
Android home screen customization used to be my bread and butter
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Screenshot
In the early 2010s, one of my favorite Android features was its infinite potential for customization. I was switching between Apex, ADW, and Nova Launcher back then, finding cool icon themes, building custom weather, time, music, and calendar widgets, and looking for new wallpapers and ideas every few days to switch around. The screenshots you see above are just a small sample of what I tried during that phase.
It was an incredibly fun and creative period of my life, where I had limited responsibilities and work. I could lose myself in a new setup for hours or days and optimize it to exactly how I wanted it to be. Then I’d use it for a couple of days, take a screenshot, file it away (here’s a Google Photos album of all of them), and try to come up with a new setup to replace it. All these long customization sessions were why I fell in love with Android in the first place.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
There’s a reason why all of my screenshots stop around the fall of 2013, though. It’s when I started testing Aviate Launcher (seen above), which promised to bring my apps to me contextually, when and where I needed them. 12 years later, this is still not a reality, but in 2013, the promise was very intriguing. Aviate didn’t have a lot of customization options, but it made me realize I didn’t need them. This was also a time in my life when my work and responsibilities were growing, and when I also stopped messing with custom ROMs. Both factors converged into making me stick with a more “dull” home screen setup. They changed how I saw my Android phone and launcher, and made me appreciate the ease of access to my apps versus having a pretty wallpaper with busy widgets and only a few icons.
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