The Android launcher is much more powerful than you think (w/ Kevin Barry, Nova Launcher)

Mishaal: 00:00:00

Okay, well, thank you everyone for joining us this week,

Mishaal: 00:00:03

we're going to be talking about the stock, or should I say first party

Mishaal: 00:00:07

launcher experience on Android?

Mishaal: 00:00:10

We have a special guest with us, Kevin Berry, who is the lead developer of Novo.

Mishaal: 00:00:16

If you've ever looked up installing a third-party launch application on your

Mishaal: 00:00:20

device, you very likely come across or have used Nova launcher in the past.

Mishaal: 00:00:25

It is one of the longest standing, actively developed third-party

Mishaal: 00:00:30

launch applications on Android.

Mishaal: 00:00:32

And we're really happy to have Kevin here on the show with us.

Mishaal: 00:00:35

Thanks for joining us, Kevin,

Kevin: 00:00:39

glad to be here and nice to talk to him.

David: 00:00:42

Yeah, Kevin, I think we met years ago at Google IO, like Google

David: 00:00:47

IO, 2016 or 17 or something like that.

David: 00:00:51

You know, I've used Nova off and on over the years, but when we talk

David: 00:00:54

about launchers Michelle, I think a great place to start is really

David: 00:00:58

why Android is special because of the way it uses launchers and how.

Mishaal: 00:01:05

Right.

Mishaal: 00:01:06

So I'm sure most of, you know, what a launcher refers to on Android.

Mishaal: 00:01:10

Generally when people talk about it, it's the app that provides the homescreen

Mishaal: 00:01:13

interface, the interface where you can launch applications from, you can put

Mishaal: 00:01:18

widgets on, you can change a wallpaper.

Mishaal: 00:01:20

It's the, perhaps the app that you interact with the

Mishaal: 00:01:23

most because it's where you.

Mishaal: 00:01:25

Well, before you launch applications from, that's, why it's called a launcher.

Mishaal: 00:01:29

And the, one of the key differences between Android and iOS since the very

Mishaal: 00:01:33

beginning has been the fact that you can change the laundry app on Android.

Mishaal: 00:01:38

And you can't do that on iOS.

Mishaal: 00:01:39

So pretty much all iOS devices at the same launcher pretty much

Mishaal: 00:01:43

a similar home screen set up.

Mishaal: 00:01:44

And, you know, it was a big deal when iOS started getting some minimal

Mishaal: 00:01:47

homescreen set up customization, but Android decided that for years.

Mishaal: 00:01:51

And that's been one of the biggest differences between the two operators.

Mishaal: 00:01:55

So I just want to throw this quick question out to all of you

Mishaal: 00:01:58

because you know, launches have been around for over a decade.

Mishaal: 00:02:01

Now, Android itself is over a decade old.

Mishaal: 00:02:04

Have you ever used a third-party launcher for an extended period?

Mishaal: 00:02:07

And by that, I mean, like you installed it and you kept it installed for

Mishaal: 00:02:11

not just like a week to play around with, but for months or maybe years.

Mishaal: 00:02:15

And if so, are you still using.

Kevin: 00:02:17

Well, it's probably no surprise, but I do use Nova launcher.

Kevin: 00:02:21

But to go back in time a bit, when before I made no lunches, so the

Kevin: 00:02:25

Android to Dayaks era, then I was the developer of widget locker as

Kevin: 00:02:30

well, which is a custom black screen.

Kevin: 00:02:31

Also based on the launcher code, the opensource.

Kevin: 00:02:35

It was paid lunch or code.

Kevin: 00:02:36

At that time, sometimes I would just use the stock launcher.

Kevin: 00:02:39

But I also tried ADW launcher and launcher pro.

Kevin: 00:02:42

And part of the reason I was using them was just to get a different

Kevin: 00:02:44

experience as a developer.

Kevin: 00:02:46

And how would you locker interacted with them?

Kevin: 00:02:49

But part of it, especially if I was using like a Motorola device that had an awful

Kevin: 00:02:52

launch at the time I got the better, the more Google like experience by using one

Kevin: 00:02:57

of those launchers rather than the OEM.

David: 00:03:01

And I think that's, that's an interesting thing to bring up as far

David: 00:03:04

as the OEM experiences back in the day, because they were especially bad Modo.

David: 00:03:09

Their software layer was called Moto blur and it was notorious for being

David: 00:03:13

like just terrible, terrible performance and really heavy handed modernly.

David: 00:03:19

Most Android launchers are really just themes on a common mantra

David: 00:03:23

paradigm, but it wasn't that way back

David: 00:03:25

in the.

Mishaal: 00:03:26

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:03:26

And one of the key differences between stock or first party

Mishaal: 00:03:30

launchers, I should say.

Mishaal: 00:03:31

And third-party launchers has been customizability.

Mishaal: 00:03:33

And to this day, I think third-party launchers still have most first party

Mishaal: 00:03:38

launchers beat when it comes to customer.

Kevin: 00:03:42

And though I generally have been very displeased with OEM launches to

Kevin: 00:03:46

give credit on resizable widgets was first done by Moto blur and scrollable

Kevin: 00:03:51

widgets was first done by HTC.

Kevin: 00:03:53

And then later I mean, it's in the third-party launchers adopted that there

Kevin: 00:03:57

was a custom API for sending widget sizes, I think, and for scrolling.

Kevin: 00:04:02

And then eventually Google officially supported those.

David: 00:04:07

Yeah.

David: 00:04:07

And we see that across the Android platform, Google pulling from partners

David: 00:04:11

for interface, elements, or features.

David: 00:04:14

And the launcher is one where I think, you know, we've really seen that

David: 00:04:18

evolve a whole lot both from other Android makers, but also a little bit

David: 00:04:24

from apple too, which is interesting.

Mishaal: 00:04:27

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:04:27

So Kevin, you clearly have a lot of experience with laundry applications

Mishaal: 00:04:32

on Android, you've been making level entre for over a decade.

Mishaal: 00:04:35

Now, I think it was this past December where you guys just

Mishaal: 00:04:39

celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the release of Nova launcher.

Mishaal: 00:04:42

It was released back in the era of Android 4.0 ICS.

Mishaal: 00:04:46

And you know, you guys are still updating it to the states.

Mishaal: 00:04:48

It's pretty cool.

Mishaal: 00:04:50

I just wanted to ask you, like, what's it been like working

Mishaal: 00:04:52

on this project for so long?

Mishaal: 00:04:54

Do you have any particularly memorable moments you want to tell us about?

Kevin: 00:04:57

I guess there's a lot.

Kevin: 00:04:58

It's certainly it's been a long time.

Kevin: 00:05:01

When I got into, I mean, when I got into Andrew development,

Kevin: 00:05:04

it was, I had a day job.

Kevin: 00:05:06

I figured her development was a hot indie enter developed as a hobby for

Kevin: 00:05:09

fun and eventually be good on a resume, but I didn't really expect to stick

Kevin: 00:05:14

with it this long and to be doing it independently this long the launcher

Kevin: 00:05:18

aspect It's it's an exciting place that there's it doesn't get stale.

Kevin: 00:05:23

So there's always, I have features that Austin has they add a

Kevin: 00:05:27

feature and I think, oh yeah.

Kevin: 00:05:28

I first thought about doing this back and Nova 1.0 or so then I

Kevin: 00:05:31

didn't get around to it until now or 10 years later or something.

Kevin: 00:05:35

So there's plenty.

Kevin: 00:05:36

On the backlog to do.

Kevin: 00:05:37

And it's also keeping up with what Google or OEMs are doing.

Kevin: 00:05:40

And sometimes that's, you know, working around stupid

Kevin: 00:05:42

bugs, that's just frustrating.

Kevin: 00:05:44

But other times it's like adaptive icons.

Kevin: 00:05:47

That was a cool new take when Google first release that.

Kevin: 00:05:50

And now it looks like they're going to do more with theming of that.

Kevin: 00:05:52

So it's it's fun to just see what's out there and what I can make use.

David: 00:05:57

So on that note, actually, Kevin, and, you know, feel free to, to no

David: 00:06:01

comments on this one, if it's, if it's a forbidden subject, but you know, obviously

David: 00:06:06

you've been in this space for so long.

David: 00:06:08

Launchers are interesting, not just to users.

David: 00:06:10

They're interesting to phone manufacturers and.

David: 00:06:14

Because they're the primary kind of surface on which a user is going to

David: 00:06:17

be interacting with their product.

David: 00:06:19

And I know at some point Nova did have a partnership with one phone OEM,

David: 00:06:22

which we will not name unless you want to name what's your experience been

David: 00:06:26

like with that with partnerships and companies reaching out to work with you?

Kevin: 00:06:30

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's public information and Nova ship on the razor

Kevin: 00:06:33

phones that net Motorola razor, the razor, the gaming company phones OEMs

Kevin: 00:06:39

kind of struggle with the launcher that like, you know, an OEM like Samsung

Kevin: 00:06:42

of course, they're putting a lot of work into scan the whole device.

Kevin: 00:06:44

And the laundry is a key part of that, but smaller OEMs, like razor, they

Kevin: 00:06:49

don't want to deal with as much of that.

Kevin: 00:06:51

And launchers are an area that it's hard to find an existing developer

Kevin: 00:06:54

that has experience in launchers.

Kevin: 00:06:56

And it's what Google gives you.

Kevin: 00:06:59

Excuse me, the stack luncher three, doesn't give you enough to be compelling.

Kevin: 00:07:04

So for the, how the razor deal came about was razor bought next bit, which

Kevin: 00:07:09

was a small startup making phones, and next that made their own launcher.

Kevin: 00:07:14

And part of that was they had this cloud sync feature when they were

Kevin: 00:07:17

working on it, they realized they hated doing launch development.

Kevin: 00:07:20

And most of their users were power users that are installing Nova launcher.

Kevin: 00:07:23

So we had talked a little bit back today and just like, if we could have some

Kevin: 00:07:26

API to improve their cloud sync and third-party launchers and nothing came

Kevin: 00:07:30

of that, but then they were acquired by razor and around, right at that

Kevin: 00:07:34

time they were emailing me saying, are we working on a future phone?

Kevin: 00:07:37

We want to see if you'd be interested in working with us on this.

Kevin: 00:07:39

And I was pretty pleased with that deal, that it was like they

Kevin: 00:07:42

shipped actually Nova launcher.

Kevin: 00:07:44

Whereas some OEMs I've been contacted before by OEMs.

Kevin: 00:07:46

They want to white label the launch or something.

Kevin: 00:07:48

And that.

Kevin: 00:07:51

It's more work, it complicates things.

Kevin: 00:07:53

And it's just a bit less interesting.

Kevin: 00:07:57

So, yeah, I was pleased with that setup.

Kevin: 00:08:00

It was, there wasn't too much.

Kevin: 00:08:02

They had already tested Nova launcher on the razor phone.

Kevin: 00:08:05

Us, there is a fallen that was one of the first standard devices to have a higher,

Kevin: 00:08:08

higher than 60 frames per second screen.

Kevin: 00:08:11

So they had tested Nova that and ran fine at the 120 Hertz.

Kevin: 00:08:14

I think they've done some basic CTS that's the Android compatibility test suite.

Kevin: 00:08:18

They had done some of those basic tests against Nova

Kevin: 00:08:20

launcher and it mostly passed.

Kevin: 00:08:22

So there wasn't too many surprises.

Kevin: 00:08:23

They had a couple of things.

Kevin: 00:08:24

They needed an API for them to customize some things.

Kevin: 00:08:27

But it was pretty straightforward.

Kevin: 00:08:29

I've talked to other OEMs on talk to reason more.

Kevin: 00:08:34

The, I like working on a product for consumers and working with OEMs.

Kevin: 00:08:42

If, you know, doing a white label launcher for OEMs, they don't

Kevin: 00:08:45

really know what launchers are.

Kevin: 00:08:47

They don't know what they're looking for.

Kevin: 00:08:48

They don't know what users want.

Kevin: 00:08:49

They don't necessarily care what users want.

Kevin: 00:08:52

It's not something that's that interesting to me, but I do see like,

Kevin: 00:08:55

there's a, there's a need for this.

Kevin: 00:08:57

And so if someone out there wants to make a lunch or for OEMs there's a market.

David: 00:09:03

I think that's really interesting.

David: 00:09:04

And I think it gets into, I guess the question of what's good for the user

David: 00:09:08

and what's good for the OEM and that's what Google is trying to balance with

David: 00:09:13

with its stock launch or efforts.

David: 00:09:15

And I think Michelle you know, if we want to head in that direction and discuss how

David: 00:09:19

the stock Android launcher has evolved

David: 00:09:20

over the years.

Mishaal: 00:09:22

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:09:22

It is interesting to hear from you that a lot of OEMs are quite, I guess clueless

Mishaal: 00:09:28

when it comes to making Watchers, that users will actually enjoy because the

Mishaal: 00:09:32

launcher is probably the most important application on an Android device.

Mishaal: 00:09:36

And it's the app that there's most interact with.

Mishaal: 00:09:39

But you know, Google for what they're doing is they foster the developmental

Mishaal: 00:09:44

contract planter applications.

Mishaal: 00:09:46

As you mentioned, the AOSP reference mutation that's available to

Mishaal: 00:09:50

everyone is not that like feature.

Mishaal: 00:09:54

But Google does continue to iterate on it.

Mishaal: 00:09:56

They do add new features and it's what most OEMs base their

Mishaal: 00:09:59

launch or applications on.

Mishaal: 00:10:01

It's what Nova bases.

Mishaal: 00:10:02

It's, what's what you guys base your laundry application on.

Mishaal: 00:10:06

It's what many other laundry is based on.

Mishaal: 00:10:08

And that's especially become more and more important to do

Mishaal: 00:10:12

because of how much has been baked into the laundry application.

Mishaal: 00:10:16

As the title of this podcast episode will tell you they'll stock Android

Mishaal: 00:10:20

launcher does a whole lot more than.

Mishaal: 00:10:22

Be a launcher.

Mishaal: 00:10:23

It's not just the place for you to launch your applications anymore.

Mishaal: 00:10:27

So while we're on this subject, I wanted to take things back a bit

Mishaal: 00:10:31

and talk about, you know, the, the reference launch or implementation,

Mishaal: 00:10:34

how it's evolved over the years.

Mishaal: 00:10:36

So it's been around for pretty much, almost a decade now, launcher three

Mishaal: 00:10:42

from what you said, it launched in 2013 with the release of Android 4.4.

Mishaal: 00:10:47

But it's been iterated on for multiple releases and every time there's a

Mishaal: 00:10:53

new nexus or pixel phone launched, or some new feature added that further

Mishaal: 00:10:58

differentiates launcher three from Google's pixel launch or implementation.

Mishaal: 00:11:02

So one of the things I wanted to ask you is when do you think the playing field

Mishaal: 00:11:08

first shifted in favor of stock launchers?

Mishaal: 00:11:10

And by that, I mean, when did the.

Mishaal: 00:11:14

Launcher three implementation start requiring some system specific

Mishaal: 00:11:18

integrations that just aren't available to third-party Elantras like your own.

Kevin: 00:11:23

So it actually it got better and then got worse that I,

Kevin: 00:11:27

I'm not familiar with the launch or the original launch or code.

Kevin: 00:11:30

So the lunch or two is when I first really got into that code and launch

Kevin: 00:11:33

or two used a ton of private APIs.

Kevin: 00:11:36

So if you just took lunch or two and tried to compare.

Kevin: 00:11:38

Using at that time it was eclipse, but using the standard Android SDK,

Kevin: 00:11:42

it wouldn't compile it because it's using all these private API API APIs.

Kevin: 00:11:45

So what I did in Nova launcher when I first started Navantia 1.0, so I took the

Kevin: 00:11:50

code and I still try to use the private API eyes cause it's using them because

Kevin: 00:11:53

they're faster or they can do a bit more or whatever, but I just had fallbacks

Kevin: 00:11:57

for everything because any future Android version might fail on these APIs.

Kevin: 00:12:01

So that was just kind of a lot of work that I had to wrap all these calls,

Kevin: 00:12:05

like all the animation effects in in Andrew, an ice cream sandwich that

Kevin: 00:12:10

was kind of new to the launcher, had these like somewhat 3d effect and like

Kevin: 00:12:14

this holographic outlines and stuff.

Kevin: 00:12:16

And they're all using these view transforms except fast

Kevin: 00:12:19

access, fast scale acts.

Kevin: 00:12:21

And this fast things were skipping stops, but it's a private API.

Kevin: 00:12:25

So would use those for the speed, but I'd fall back to the slow one, just in

Kevin: 00:12:29

case they stripped it out in the future, which of course they did a lunch or three.

Kevin: 00:12:33

The first version of option three was really built to be a lunch or library

Kevin: 00:12:38

that Google now launcher, which was actually part of the Google API.

Kevin: 00:12:42

So the Google app, which I'm sure is incredibly complicated is now

Kevin: 00:12:46

including this launch of three library.

Kevin: 00:12:48

And they need to be a ship on the play store and support

Kevin: 00:12:51

multiple Android versions.

Kevin: 00:12:52

So this was really good for launch or development is that they cleaned up

Kevin: 00:12:56

the code to not use private API APIs.

Kevin: 00:12:58

And they actually started supporting older Android versions.

Kevin: 00:13:01

Whereas before, if they're there, if there's somebody going to ship

Kevin: 00:13:04

the launcher as solely on system image, they don't need to worry

Kevin: 00:13:08

about different binary versions.

Kevin: 00:13:09

It's shipping just with that.

Kevin: 00:13:11

So initially it was looking kind of good with launcher three, except

Kevin: 00:13:14

that the Google now page itself is tied to the Google now launcher.

Kevin: 00:13:18

But then they gave up on Google now on share being a third-party

Kevin: 00:13:21

launcher and just focused on pixel launcher, which is again, a system on.

Kevin: 00:13:25

And now development is weird that the partially there's the system UI,

Kevin: 00:13:30

which is a system APK, it handles the notification shade, the lock screen,

Kevin: 00:13:36

including the security part of it.

Kevin: 00:13:37

Recent apps kind of, and that's where things got weird is they started

Kevin: 00:13:42

integrating system UI and the launcher.

Kevin: 00:13:46

And so this was first really visible in a.

Kevin: 00:13:49

Android some, some point or some 0.1 where they integrated the lunches after

Kevin: 00:13:55

was visible in the recent tabs view.

Kevin: 00:13:57

So it looked kind of weird, but you had your doc of icons at the

Kevin: 00:14:01

bottom of recent apps, and that's the same as the, I, it was not the

Kevin: 00:14:04

same as the doc in your home screen.

Kevin: 00:14:05

It was the same as the frequent apps in your app drawer and he swiped

Kevin: 00:14:08

it up and it had your app drawer.

Kevin: 00:14:09

So it felt kind of integrated, but it wasn't that you.

Kevin: 00:14:12

But this was a level where it would be very hard to do this

Kevin: 00:14:16

without the apps being integrated.

Kevin: 00:14:18

So they started integrating that.

Kevin: 00:14:20

Then they killed that feature anyway, but they kept the, just, they made

Kevin: 00:14:24

gesture navigation tied to the line.

Kevin: 00:14:27

And the only real advantage of this is animations, and you can

Kevin: 00:14:29

fix this other ways, which they've partially done and then regressed.

Kevin: 00:14:33

And it makes it much harder to be a third party lawn chair.

Kevin: 00:14:36

And it also means that OEMs now, when they're changing lunch or code,

Kevin: 00:14:40

they're messing with system UI code and it makes it all more complex.

Kevin: 00:14:43

And they're more likely to introduce issues, either system you buy by itself

Kevin: 00:14:47

or when dealing with their pre launchers.

Kevin: 00:14:50

Additionally, the backwards compatibility, the current AOSP launcher 3, 420.

Kevin: 00:14:56

It still has some checks in there for, oh, if you know, if you're running on

Kevin: 00:14:59

Android 11, use this API instead of this one, but it also just completely crashes.

Kevin: 00:15:04

If you try to run it on Android 11, as it is, it's using API APIs that, I mean,

Kevin: 00:15:07

I guess they exist, but they don't work.

Kevin: 00:15:09

Right.

Kevin: 00:15:10

So it's not clear, like what.

Kevin: 00:15:12

What's their goal.

Kevin: 00:15:12

Like I feel if their goal is to just support Andrew 12, that's fine, but

Kevin: 00:15:16

rip the bandaid off and just do that.

Kevin: 00:15:18

And if their goal is to support older, a hundred versions, that's great for

Kevin: 00:15:21

me, but they don't really assist on each you know, go over things and have

Kevin: 00:15:24

my own checks and work arounds anyway.

Mishaal: 00:15:29

So you kind of touched upon a really, really important change to

Mishaal: 00:15:32

launch a three while you were talking about the history of changes there.

Mishaal: 00:15:36

The introduction of gesture navigation, which happened with

Mishaal: 00:15:39

the release of band, right?

Mishaal: 00:15:40

19.

Mishaal: 00:15:40

That release introduced the two button navigation gestures, but most

Mishaal: 00:15:44

importantly, it tried to integrate the recent apps overview code and move

Mishaal: 00:15:50

that into the launcher three code base.

Mishaal: 00:15:54

And the reason Google wants to do that as Kevin mentioned, is to improve the

Mishaal: 00:15:57

way animations looked, Google, wanted to make gesture seem seamless so that when.

Mishaal: 00:16:02

Do a swipe up from the gesture pill and Android nine PI it quickly moves to the

Mishaal: 00:16:08

recent apps overview without any hitches.

Mishaal: 00:16:10

And that the app tray on the bottom, you can quickly switch between applications

Mishaal: 00:16:14

by dragging the pill left and right.

Mishaal: 00:16:16

Et cetera.

Mishaal: 00:16:18

And but the problem of doing this is that moving so much privileged code to

Mishaal: 00:16:22

launch a three kind of turned third-party Contra applications into second class

Mishaal: 00:16:26

citizens because they just can't.

Mishaal: 00:16:28

Be the provider of the recent apt overview, the same way that system

Mishaal: 00:16:32

installed launch applications could.

Mishaal: 00:16:35

And I'd say that's probably, that's probably what started the diversion

Mishaal: 00:16:41

from the that's that's what started to diverge third-party launchers

Mishaal: 00:16:45

from system launchers in many ways.

Mishaal: 00:16:47

And but when people don't know exactly like how this affected third party

Mishaal: 00:16:51

laundries, Kevin, can you explain a bit how moving gestures and the system

Mishaal: 00:16:59

UI code for recent apps into the launcher three code base affected third

Mishaal: 00:17:03

party launchers in, in some detail,

David: 00:17:07

it looks like Kevin was kicked off.

David: 00:17:09

Yeah, he's requested speaker.

David: 00:17:11

Let me see if I can give it

David: 00:17:12

back to him.

David: 00:17:14

There we go.

Mishaal: 00:17:15

Sorry, Kevin, did you catch what I said at the end there?

Mishaal: 00:17:18

So I was just going to ask you as you know, that with the introduction

Mishaal: 00:17:22

of Android pie the quickest.

Mishaal: 00:17:25

Provider was created and third-party launchers.

Mishaal: 00:17:29

Aren't able to act as the quick step provider.

Mishaal: 00:17:31

And by that, I mean, they're not able to implement the recent

Mishaal: 00:17:34

apps overview or handle gestures, the same way the stock launcher.

Mishaal: 00:17:38

Can I just wanted to ask you what problems exactly did that

Mishaal: 00:17:42

introduce for third-party launchers?

Mishaal: 00:17:44

Like, can you describe the troubles with animations and app tasks?

Mishaal: 00:17:47

Switching?

Kevin: 00:17:50

Well, so the first limitation was that we couldn't be like

Kevin: 00:17:53

recent apps would look different.

Kevin: 00:17:55

Recent apps wouldn't show the app drawer and the top row of that when using a

Kevin: 00:18:00

third party lawn chair, and now visually was very noticeable, but it wasn't.

Kevin: 00:18:04

It didn't feel buggy or anything to, to Google's credit there.

Kevin: 00:18:08

The change where it gesture navigation stopped doing that, but it was about

Kevin: 00:18:13

animations is the animations look works with which confuses users,

Kevin: 00:18:18

OEMs introduce issues that like some OEMs don't show the clear all button

Kevin: 00:18:22

views, if they're a party launcher.

Kevin: 00:18:23

And then of course users, you know, assume that this is.

David: 00:18:27

Well, it looks like Kevin, once again, cut out.

David: 00:18:30

And I'm going to add him back.

Mishaal: 00:18:32

Okay.

David: 00:18:34

Show some disconnecting.

David: 00:18:35

We're sorry for the technical difficulties there.

David: 00:18:37

Folks.

David: 00:18:37

This is going to be a fun

David: 00:18:39

edit in post.

David: 00:18:40

Speaking of which I'm just going to mark a clap here for myself.

David: 00:18:43

Yeah, in the meantime here we'll get Kevin to continue his thoughts on, on

David: 00:18:50

that topic, but while we're waiting.

David: 00:18:53

I guess that you know, kind of the overview and the reason we're asking a

David: 00:18:57

lot of these questions is that Google has taken a, as Kevin said, a greater degree

David: 00:19:01

of control over the launch application, even though it is open source and even.

David: 00:19:08

That control is not necessarily direct.

David: 00:19:11

It can be quite technical in that Google is creating not

David: 00:19:15

challenges, but it's introducing work to emulate it's experience.

David: 00:19:20

And it looks like Kevin

Kevin: 00:19:21

is back.

Kevin: 00:19:22

Sorry for that.

Kevin: 00:19:23

I unplugged my USB microphone.

Kevin: 00:19:25

I don't know if that was causing it to do with the Twitter app.

Kevin: 00:19:27

Just keeps exiting.

Kevin: 00:19:28

Well, so back to gestures.

Kevin: 00:19:31

Yes.

Kevin: 00:19:31

So Google integrated justice with the fair to get these better animations, I guess.

Kevin: 00:19:36

And because they built the framework for when the actor was there and

Kevin: 00:19:40

it makes it behave different when you've seen a third party launcher.

Kevin: 00:19:43

And sometimes this is issues added by OEMs, like not

Kevin: 00:19:46

showing the clear all button.

Mishaal: 00:19:48

Oh dear.

Mishaal: 00:19:48

Did it happen?

Mishaal: 00:19:50

It looks

David: 00:19:50

like it may have,

Mishaal: 00:19:52

well I guess I can continue some of the thoughts there.

Mishaal: 00:19:57

If you've been paying attention to some of the recent changes that are being

Mishaal: 00:20:00

introduced in the upcoming Android, 12 L release Google is adding a

Mishaal: 00:20:04

task bar feature in at the bottom of the screen on large screen devices.

Mishaal: 00:20:09

The task bar is kind of like the task bar that you find on desktop operating system.

Mishaal: 00:20:13

And that feature is also being built into launcher three.

Mishaal: 00:20:16

So it's just yet another example of how the launcher is becoming the one-stop shop

Mishaal: 00:20:22

for everything gesture and task related.

Mishaal: 00:20:25

And yeah, it's, it's doing so much that it just isn't available

Mishaal: 00:20:29

to third-party applications.

Mishaal: 00:20:31

I don't think we'll see an API anytime soon that will let Nova launcher,

Mishaal: 00:20:34

for example, become the task bar.

David: 00:20:38

let's shift over to that 12 L discussion with the task bar,

David: 00:20:41

because I think that is the most dramatic evolution of the Android

David: 00:20:46

launcher we've seen in some time.

David: 00:20:48

Kevin, what do you see the Google is trying to accomplish

David: 00:20:51

with this 12 L laundry?

David: 00:20:53

And do you think that it's just really the beginning of what they're trying to do?

Kevin: 00:20:58

So in AOSP, there's actually been a secondary launch,

Kevin: 00:21:02

secondary display launcher.

Kevin: 00:21:04

So this is meant.

Kevin: 00:21:05

So if you plug your phone into a TV, it can have a different launcher on

Kevin: 00:21:08

it or a computer monitor or whatever.

Kevin: 00:21:11

And this is kind of supported for third party launchers, which is great that they

Kevin: 00:21:16

can also be secondary display launchers.

Kevin: 00:21:18

And the code in AOSP says, it'll look at the default launch, or if it has a

Kevin: 00:21:21

secondary display launch, it uses it.

Kevin: 00:21:22

Otherwise it uses the system.

Kevin: 00:21:24

But naturally OEMs override this.

Kevin: 00:21:27

So for and Google, doesn't actually support plugging

Kevin: 00:21:30

your pixel device into a TV.

Kevin: 00:21:32

So this is basically, you can only test it on a custom rom because Samsung

Kevin: 00:21:36

supports two screens, but they have their own Dex solution on that display.

Kevin: 00:21:41

So I think that this Android 12 Al test thing is kind of an extension

Kevin: 00:21:45

of that, of how do we get a more desktop or tablet like UI that is.

Kevin: 00:21:51

Transient it'll appear when appropriate, but not always there.

Kevin: 00:21:54

And yeah, I'm concerned with how much is going to be accessible

Kevin: 00:21:58

to third party launchers.

Kevin: 00:22:00

And I imagine it will be limited and there is, there's a degree of Google.

Kevin: 00:22:05

Kind of trying that, like there's the they did improve

Kevin: 00:22:09

animations for when exiting an app returning to the home screen.

Kevin: 00:22:13

And there's the secondary display launch or there is the API there for it.

Kevin: 00:22:17

So maybe they'll throw a small bone to a third party launched or.

Kevin: 00:22:22

With this task bar thing, but I'm sure it's not going to be enough

Kevin: 00:22:25

and it's not going to be well-tested because Google doesn't like the

Kevin: 00:22:29

Justin AF contract for that return animation, they just don't test it.

Kevin: 00:22:32

Or they, you know, minimally test it, but not with actual users because they don't

Kevin: 00:22:36

build a third party launcher anymore.

Mishaal: 00:22:39

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:22:39

That is one thing that you just will probably come across issues and.

Mishaal: 00:22:44

With the third-party launchers on devices that run 12 hour and it's something

Mishaal: 00:22:48

we'll definitely have to keep an eye out or but to Google's credit, they

Mishaal: 00:22:51

do make some general, they do make a lot of general improvements that affect

Mishaal: 00:22:55

the improve the user experience for all users of third-party launchers.

Mishaal: 00:23:00

For example, Android 12, Google made a big deal about the

Mishaal: 00:23:04

improvements they made to widgets.

Mishaal: 00:23:05

And although widgets are not, you know, they're not contained within launchers.

Mishaal: 00:23:10

They are an integral part of the laundry.

Mishaal: 00:23:12

In 12 Google revamped that design of, of widgets to encourage developers to

Mishaal: 00:23:18

implement material you, they revamped the widget picker experience and the set up

Mishaal: 00:23:23

and post set up experience for widgets.

Mishaal: 00:23:25

And they also introduced a developer support library that makes it

Mishaal: 00:23:28

easier to build layouts for widgets.

Mishaal: 00:23:30

So there's a lot of widget related work that Google did and Android 12.

Mishaal: 00:23:34

And I wanted to ask you, Kevin, what do you think was the most significant.

Mishaal: 00:23:39

Change they made in 12 in terms of with

Kevin: 00:23:41

its,

Kevin: 00:23:44

I think it's it's not so much the technical, but it's that they're

Kevin: 00:23:48

encouraging users and developers to use widgets and to update them to

Kevin: 00:23:52

be modern which has an Android have always been a strong point of it.

Kevin: 00:23:57

And then, well, I guess they were a certain point and they kind of stagnated.

Kevin: 00:24:00

So like a lot of my users are using KW GT custom widgets.

Kevin: 00:24:05

And this is a great program.

Kevin: 00:24:06

Lets you customize build your own widgets however you want.

Kevin: 00:24:09

But of course it's and you can it's one app, so you can make them all

Kevin: 00:24:12

look similar, however you want it to.

Kevin: 00:24:13

But of course it's limited what data has access.

Kevin: 00:24:16

So ideally third party apps all have widgets and you can have them

Kevin: 00:24:20

all together and they actually look good, but that's the limitation is

Kevin: 00:24:23

that like the g-mail, which is going to look bad and next to a Twitter

Kevin: 00:24:26

web, because they just use different colors and size in and everything.

Kevin: 00:24:30

So Google encouraging material you for widgets.

Kevin: 00:24:33

I think that's a place that.

Kevin: 00:24:36

Apps that are going to be too concerned about their brand.

Kevin: 00:24:38

They're going to feel it's fine if it doesn't have, you know, their normal

Kevin: 00:24:40

color shade, because it's gonna be on a user's wallpaper anyway, and then we'll

Kevin: 00:24:44

blend it with other widgets and then use this to be able to build these nice

Kevin: 00:24:46

themed home screens without having to build all their own widgets by themselves

Kevin: 00:24:50

using the Cajun KWCT are similar.

Mishaal: 00:24:54

So a widgets aren't the only.

Mishaal: 00:24:57

Feature that Google is touching when it comes to both the launcher experience.

Mishaal: 00:25:01

Android 12, they recently began to experiment with themed icons and

Mishaal: 00:25:07

currently the steamed icons are coded.

Mishaal: 00:25:10

The list of them is not, it's not something that third party developers

Mishaal: 00:25:14

can implement at the moment, but for the longest time, many third-party

Mishaal: 00:25:18

launchers and OEM letters of support icon packs, but it seems Google is taking a

Mishaal: 00:25:22

different approach with themed icons.

Mishaal: 00:25:25

I wanted to ask you.

Mishaal: 00:25:26

Well, why do you think Google has an added, I compact support to

Mishaal: 00:25:30

Palantir three experience yet.

Mishaal: 00:25:31

And what do you think of its new deemed icons?

Kevin: 00:25:36

So issue with icon packs is that a third party developer is deciding

Kevin: 00:25:41

what some app is going to look like.

Kevin: 00:25:43

And so this can happen on Nova launcher.

Kevin: 00:25:46

The icon has changed a bit over the years not significantly, but it has changed.

Kevin: 00:25:50

And sometimes I see themes where they still using really old icon of

Kevin: 00:25:54

Nova and basing their icon off that.

Kevin: 00:25:56

And it just looks a bit wrong.

Kevin: 00:25:58

And for bigger brands that are more particular about this, they

Kevin: 00:26:01

could be pretty upset with Google.

Kevin: 00:26:03

If Google is letting them change, you know, their logo, their colors,

Kevin: 00:26:06

to something random that some dev decided, especially if the dev,

Kevin: 00:26:10

you know, didn't like an app.

Kevin: 00:26:11

So they intentionally made it look bad or something.

Kevin: 00:26:14

So I can see there's kind of a responsibility.

Kevin: 00:26:16

Google has to app developers to not let their apps, their app.

David: 00:26:21

Well, it looks like we lost Kevin again, but I think I

David: 00:26:23

know where he was going there.

David: 00:26:25

And it's a, it's a really interesting one that most users probably don't think

David: 00:26:28

about with icon packs, which is that there's a lot of intellectual property

David: 00:26:31

of play in a logo it's a trademark.

David: 00:26:34

And so companies are very protective of that.

David: 00:26:36

And that's why you see you know, there just isn't really, you know,

David: 00:26:42

Impetus on the side of Google or device makers to, to reshape

David: 00:26:47

another company's icon or product or iconography, I should say because they

David: 00:26:51

could get them in legal trouble and B it just needlessly upsets people.

David: 00:26:55

But as a user unifying, that design language is incredibly desirable

David: 00:27:00

and that's why contacts are so

David: 00:27:01

popular.

Mishaal: 00:27:04

And it's why I think Google will probably take a different approach with

Mishaal: 00:27:07

the themed icons in the next Sanford.

Mishaal: 00:27:10

Speaking of what Kevin and David brought up, you know, Google doesn't want to

Mishaal: 00:27:14

let users mess with icons themselves, but if app developers were to implement

Mishaal: 00:27:20

themed icon support on their own, perhaps by say implementing an adaptive icon,

Mishaal: 00:27:26

then Google could update the platform API and make it so that the platform

Mishaal: 00:27:32

uh uniformly applies monochromic and then tinting those application icon.

Mishaal: 00:27:37

Implement dynamic coloring for icons.

Mishaal: 00:27:40

So I think that would probably be an approach that would

Mishaal: 00:27:44

be the best of both grounds.

Mishaal: 00:27:45

It would give users the ability to theme icons, and it would avoid the

Mishaal: 00:27:50

intellectual property disputes that might arise from, you know, letting

Mishaal: 00:27:54

developers submit icon packs that, you know, modify a brand's logo in some way.

Kevin: 00:28:00

To continue theme the icons, having them hard-coded doesn't work.

Kevin: 00:28:04

You can't have a compelling home screen having an API where developers

Kevin: 00:28:07

can make their own monochrome icon and in the system can apply

Kevin: 00:28:11

colors to the background and for.

Kevin: 00:28:13

That'd be really cool.

Kevin: 00:28:15

It, let users have easily have a customized home screen and, you

Kevin: 00:28:19

know, be able to change the colors or change the wallpaper or change

Kevin: 00:28:21

the colors and it give their pre launch or something to play with.

Kevin: 00:28:25

Like we might go to do interesting things with that.

Kevin: 00:28:27

So I'm excited to see where that goes.

Mishaal: 00:28:30

And there is one more question I wanted to ask you on, on that note.

Mishaal: 00:28:34

Are there any launch existing one to three features you'd really

Mishaal: 00:28:37

love to implement if it was.

Kevin: 00:28:41

So, I mean, yeah, I'd love if I could integrate gesture navigation.

Kevin: 00:28:45

And I can't partially, it'd be cool to interdict integrate and let users

Kevin: 00:28:49

customize gestures you know, extend it.

Kevin: 00:28:52

So maybe swiping from the side of this from the left side of the screen is

Kevin: 00:28:55

different than from the right side of the screen or from the top is different

Kevin: 00:28:58

than bottom are two finger gestures or whatever, like giving the Nova

Kevin: 00:29:01

style customization of gestures to system-wide gestures would be awesome.

Kevin: 00:29:05

But that's, I can kind of understand why Google wants to give third party

Kevin: 00:29:10

launchers, that level of control that system, because it could break so much,

Kevin: 00:29:14

it can make the phone kind of unusable and difficult to change the settings back.

Kevin: 00:29:18

But it'd be very fun if they allow that I don't really see that happening, but

Kevin: 00:29:22

if they, I feel they can fix animations and if they could fix that and fix it,

Kevin: 00:29:27

I guess there's also, there's the new.

Kevin: 00:29:29

Deep search, which I've in theory, it might be usable by third party

Kevin: 00:29:33

launchers, but I believe the apps that are putting things in a

Kevin: 00:29:36

search would have to opt into that.

Kevin: 00:29:38

And I don't see that happening, but the idea of that search is that

Kevin: 00:29:41

the search on your launch will be able to search like, you know, your

Kevin: 00:29:43

bookmarks in Chrome or something.

Kevin: 00:29:45

And I'd love to be able to do that, but I don't, I, the, the way the API

Kevin: 00:29:49

works, you can put anything in there and anything can search for it, but

Kevin: 00:29:52

there are permissions there and I can't get any results right now, at least.

Mishaal: 00:29:57

Yeah, from, from what I've seen, the universal search feature,

Mishaal: 00:30:00

that's on the pixel launcher.

Mishaal: 00:30:02

It's not actually provided by the launcher itself.

Mishaal: 00:30:04

It's provided by the Android system intelligence application, the service

Mishaal: 00:30:08

for that search experience, which is a separate app that's exclusive,

Mishaal: 00:30:13

or the most of the features in that app are exclusive to pixel devices.

Mishaal: 00:30:16

So I don't know how third party countries would be able to implement.

Kevin: 00:30:21

Yeah, there's two parts of the new search API.

Kevin: 00:30:24

So there's a backwards compatible version.

Kevin: 00:30:26

You can use an older Android versions, but it's not for like

Kevin: 00:30:29

you to ingrain in your own app.

Kevin: 00:30:31

Like if you have a note taking app, you can integrate this and you can

Kevin: 00:30:33

use it as a search function, but it can also publish to the system.

Kevin: 00:30:37

And then other providers can search.

Kevin: 00:30:39

And all the documentation just kind of says it in this way, but of

Kevin: 00:30:42

course there needs to be security on it and it doesn't reference.

Kevin: 00:30:45

So if you want to make it available with third party launchers, and I tried making

Kevin: 00:30:48

my own app where I insert something and try to search for it from another

Kevin: 00:30:51

app and I'm unable to get the results.

Kevin: 00:30:54

So it doesn't look promising.

Mishaal: 00:30:57

That is one issue in particular with a lot of

Mishaal: 00:31:00

these platform developments.

Mishaal: 00:31:02

They're just not very well-documented unless you're an Android

Mishaal: 00:31:04

partner and have access to.

Mishaal: 00:31:06

Presentations and the documents that Google prepares and only

Mishaal: 00:31:09

gives out to its OEM partners.

David: 00:31:12

Hey everyone.

David: 00:31:12

This is David.

David: 00:31:13

I'm just dropping this clip in here to let you know, this is where the recording

David: 00:31:16

separate between our Twitter space that we did with Kevin and the later zoom call

David: 00:31:21

that we did to finish up the conversation.

David: 00:31:23

We understand the audio from the Twitter space.

David: 00:31:25

Isn't great.

David: 00:31:26

And we are probably not using that going forward, so things can kind of jump

David: 00:31:31

around randomly it feels like that's why

Mishaal: 00:31:34

Okay, Kevin.

Mishaal: 00:31:35

So you touched upon a really important change to launch at three while you were

Mishaal: 00:31:38

talking about the history of changes.

Mishaal: 00:31:41

Earlier the introduction of gesture navigation that happened to be released

Mishaal: 00:31:46

with Android nine PI included two button navigation gestures, but

Mishaal: 00:31:51

more importantly, what it did is it integrated the recent apps overview.

Mishaal: 00:31:55

And move that into the launcher three code base.

Mishaal: 00:31:58

And the reason Google wants to do that as Kevin mentioned before, is

Mishaal: 00:32:02

to improve the way animations looked.

Mishaal: 00:32:04

Google wanted to make gesture, seem seamless so that when you do a swipe

Mishaal: 00:32:07

up from the gesture pill and Android nine PI things move quickly to

Mishaal: 00:32:11

the recent app overview without any hitches and that the app tray on the

Mishaal: 00:32:15

bottom when you quickly swipe left and right, you can switch between Africa.

Mishaal: 00:32:20

And it looks pretty seamless, but the problem with moving all of this code from

Mishaal: 00:32:25

system UI to launcher three, is that.

Mishaal: 00:32:28

Added a lot of privileged components to launch her three that launcher,

Mishaal: 00:32:32

that third-party applications are just not able to access.

Mishaal: 00:32:36

And because of this, it kind of turned third-party launcher applications

Mishaal: 00:32:39

into second class citizens where they couldn't be the provider of a lot of

Mishaal: 00:32:44

this critical functionality, the same way that pre-installed system applications.

Mishaal: 00:32:49

And I think this is probably the biggest case of where third-party

Mishaal: 00:32:52

launchers and system mantra starts to diverge in terms of functionality.

Mishaal: 00:32:57

But what a lot of people don't know is exactly how this divergence

Mishaal: 00:33:01

from the system UI code to launch or three, how exactly that

Mishaal: 00:33:05

affected third party launchers.

Mishaal: 00:33:07

So Kevin, I wanted to ask you, can you talk about how this change affected

Mishaal: 00:33:12

their party launchers in terms of like animations and tasks handling.

Kevin: 00:33:16

Yeah.

Kevin: 00:33:16

So the actual animation issue, this is solvable without integrating the launcher

Kevin: 00:33:20

and assistant UI together and also integrating a system UI and a third-party

Kevin: 00:33:25

launcher is a solvable problem.

Kevin: 00:33:26

They could have just like at the launcher itself, replaces a

Kevin: 00:33:29

kind of a core system component.

Kevin: 00:33:31

They could build the API in a secure way that allows third

Kevin: 00:33:35

party launchers to do this just as natively as the system one day.

Kevin: 00:33:38

So these are somewhat artificial limitations, but I think the

Kevin: 00:33:41

motive is basically, they're just trying to do it quickly.

Kevin: 00:33:44

And simply not that they're intentionally trying to punish their inquiry

Kevin: 00:33:48

launchers, they just neglect them.

Kevin: 00:33:50

But it's, it's certainly hurt the third-party launch or market is that some

Kevin: 00:33:53

users want the best gesture experience.

Kevin: 00:33:56

And it's hard to offer that as a third party launcher because we just

Kevin: 00:33:59

don't have access to the, the system components that the stock launch or.

Kevin: 00:34:04

So this is kind of in the iOS direction where the launch is just part of

Kevin: 00:34:07

the system and you can't change.

Kevin: 00:34:08

It is now the gesture launch integration is just part of the

Kevin: 00:34:11

system and you can't change it.

Mishaal: 00:34:13

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:34:14

So that's actually a great point.

Mishaal: 00:34:15

And the like more part of the reason we started this discussion is because

Mishaal: 00:34:19

Android is such a complex ecosystem and Google has been slowly taking more and

Mishaal: 00:34:24

more control over the launcher code base.

Mishaal: 00:34:27

But at the same time, because they're the.

Mishaal: 00:34:30

Gatekeepers of the Android ecosystem.

Mishaal: 00:34:31

They also have a responsibility to all the other partners and

Mishaal: 00:34:34

developers who rely on them.

Mishaal: 00:34:36

So whenever they make such a big change to like monitor three, for example, it

Mishaal: 00:34:40

propagates and it affects many other parties who are using that code base.

Mishaal: 00:34:45

As Kevin said, Google probably didn't intentionally want to

Mishaal: 00:34:48

break third party launchers.

Mishaal: 00:34:50

There's probably a lot of Google employees who love using Nova

Mishaal: 00:34:52

launcher within the company.

Mishaal: 00:34:53

But the fact of the matter is they had a priority.

Mishaal: 00:34:56

They wanted to implement gesture navigation.

Mishaal: 00:34:58

They wanted to make it seamless.

Mishaal: 00:34:59

So and they also had a limited timeframe to do so because they had.

Mishaal: 00:35:04

Release cadence.

Mishaal: 00:35:05

So they got this out first, they moved the code base to launch a three and then

Mishaal: 00:35:10

slowly over time, they started to improve the experience of third-party launchers.

Kevin: 00:35:15

Yeah.

Kevin: 00:35:15

And an issue also that happens with the, with Google doing this is how

Kevin: 00:35:19

the OEMs interpret it is before OEMs would make changes to system UI, or

Kevin: 00:35:23

they make changes to their stock.

Kevin: 00:35:25

But this didn't have as much impact on third-party launchers.

Kevin: 00:35:28

Like certainly we've had to deal with things like which it's being built

Kevin: 00:35:30

into the Elantra or which it's not actually working or needing to wear

Kevin: 00:35:33

workarounds to work, but there wasn't as they weren't as tied together, which

Kevin: 00:35:37

meant the third party launcher could exist on an OEM system much better.

Kevin: 00:35:41

Whereas now, since Google made the integration, OEMs continue

Kevin: 00:35:44

with that, and sometimes they introduce all these weird issues.

Kevin: 00:35:47

By integrating gesture and their launcher.

Kevin: 00:35:49

So some of your OEMs have just blocked third party launchers, some

Kevin: 00:35:53

change, weird things in the UI.

Kevin: 00:35:54

Like sometimes the close all apps button isn't shown in the recent sober view.

Kevin: 00:35:59

And sometimes we just get these really weird bugs and, you know,

Kevin: 00:36:02

we tell users, yeah, sorry.

Kevin: 00:36:03

That's basically what your OEM did on your phone.

Kevin: 00:36:07

It's gonna happen with any third party launcher and they don't want to hear it.

Kevin: 00:36:09

And we don't want to tell them that, but there's not another answer.

Kevin: 00:36:12

It's just the way it is.

David: 00:36:15

And I think that's kind of a good segue into what really, you know,

David: 00:36:20

a launcher does, conceptually, not just for a smartphone, but the Android as a

David: 00:36:25

platform is on a variety of form factors.

David: 00:36:27

So you have televisions, you have wearables, you have cars

David: 00:36:32

now that fully run Android for the in vehicle infotainment.

David: 00:36:37

And Google has.

David: 00:36:38

Different policies about which of these platforms it wants to make a

David: 00:36:42

reference launcher available for as an open source product versus gating

David: 00:36:47

it to, you know, the GMs for GMs equivalent with these operating systems.

David: 00:36:52

So, Kevin, I guess I'd be really curious, you know, have you ever thought about

David: 00:36:56

developing a launcher for Android TV?

David: 00:36:59

And I, I don't even.

David: 00:37:00

Feasible, it would be for Waro S I'm guessing.

David: 00:37:02

Not at all, but you know, have you thought about other form factors and

David: 00:37:06

is that really even possible with them?

Kevin: 00:37:10

I certainly have where a Wes back, the, the very first builds I

Kevin: 00:37:16

think you could replace the clock face, but you couldn't receive touch events.

Kevin: 00:37:19

But then I think I was one of the first to discover, but I don't

Kevin: 00:37:22

think I publicized there's a worker and you could use these,

Kevin: 00:37:25

some old Android API APIs.

Kevin: 00:37:26

You could get touch events and kind of proxy them through so

Kevin: 00:37:29

you can handle touch events.

Kevin: 00:37:30

So I did experiment like, you know, could I build some kind of lunch

Kevin: 00:37:33

or, you know, tappable widget?

Kevin: 00:37:35

But partially, whereas a small platform Nova takes a lot of time to work on.

Kevin: 00:37:39

So it'd be a distraction from that for something that might not go anywhere.

Kevin: 00:37:42

And yeah, like you said, it's, there's limited possibilities on that form factor.

Kevin: 00:37:47

Android TV would be more interesting.

Kevin: 00:37:49

Still there's the fact that it's a bit more limited less user base.

Kevin: 00:37:54

People who want to watch TV are more focused on watching TV, whereas using

Kevin: 00:37:58

your phone, it's something you're, you're constantly interacting with.

Kevin: 00:38:01

So the launcher is much more of a key thing there.

Kevin: 00:38:03

But actually Android TV doesn't allow natively replacing the launcher

Kevin: 00:38:07

like, you know, there's some hacks and workarounds, but nothing good.

Kevin: 00:38:10

And even OEMs are required to use the Android TV launcher.

Kevin: 00:38:14

So that's does it provide a market for launchers there, which is.

David: 00:38:20

Yeah, and I think that's the kind of disparity I wanted to highlight.

David: 00:38:24

And I guess maybe get your take on what Google's philosophy there is because

David: 00:38:29

with Android on smartphones, you know, when it came, when Android was initially

David: 00:38:33

released, the being able to change the launcher was just one of those such

David: 00:38:36

a basic functionality that was like, It built into the S like they wanted

David: 00:38:41

that to be something the user could use because it was designed for power users.

David: 00:38:45

And so being able to do that made sense, because in windows, you can completely

David: 00:38:49

change your interface to and on Mac, you can do actually a fair bit,

David: 00:38:53

but it's a little more limited, but that's anyway, I guess my question is,

David: 00:38:57

how do you think Google thinks about launchers on these other form factors?

David: 00:39:01

And does it feel like maybe it made a mistake with how it handled

David: 00:39:05

them on phones in retrospect,

Kevin: 00:39:09

I've certainly always worried.

Kevin: 00:39:11

Like what if Google stopped supporting third party launchers and I've heard I

Kevin: 00:39:15

guess mostly from the play team kind of customization is a huge part of Android.

Kevin: 00:39:19

It's a strength of Android over iOS and, you know, they intend

Kevin: 00:39:22

to keep supporting customization, including third party launchers.

Kevin: 00:39:26

But of course they could change their mind.

Kevin: 00:39:28

It is interesting seeing that they're not allowing this in

Kevin: 00:39:30

somewhere like Android auto.

Kevin: 00:39:32

Okay.

Kevin: 00:39:32

That is more there's safety concerns.

Kevin: 00:39:35

That's, you know, it, it needs to be more laser-focused.

Kevin: 00:39:38

And Android, where does it's different, but they do have customization

Kevin: 00:39:42

Android TV is, seems kind of, yeah.

Kevin: 00:39:45

Why, why did they make this change?

Kevin: 00:39:47

And I do worry it's the Google realizes how.

Kevin: 00:39:50

Important having control over it is.

Kevin: 00:39:52

And they've seen that with Android, with OEMs and how to, you know, regain some of

Kevin: 00:39:56

the control that they gave OEMs early on.

Kevin: 00:39:59

And they're probably launchers is an aspect of that.

Kevin: 00:40:02

So it's an I also worry about with fuchsia is if if fuchsia, you know,

Kevin: 00:40:05

really ships on phones or on mainstream consumer devices, and if at all allow

Kevin: 00:40:10

customization of things like the line.

Mishaal: 00:40:12

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:40:13

I think both of you brought up great points about how, you know, the ability

Mishaal: 00:40:18

to change the launcher on alternative Android platforms is very limited.

Mishaal: 00:40:22

And it's also limited by if you're an Android partner or not.

Mishaal: 00:40:25

If you're signing GMs licensing agreements, then you even OEMs can't

Mishaal: 00:40:29

change the launcher on their devices.

Mishaal: 00:40:31

But if you are not a GMs licensee or you don't intend to ship GMs on a

Mishaal: 00:40:36

product, Like many of our customers do, then you have much greater

Mishaal: 00:40:40

control over the launcher experience because you can, you can swap the

Mishaal: 00:40:46

AOSP launcher for whatever you want.

Mishaal: 00:40:48

Although, of course, because the Android TV launcher is not open

Mishaal: 00:40:51

source, the wireless are pretty much all aware of, it's not open source.

Mishaal: 00:40:55

You'd have to develop a lot of that UI from scratch, which is requires

Mishaal: 00:41:00

significant development effort.

David: 00:41:02

And that barrier is what I think is most interesting

David: 00:41:06

about Google strategy, because.

David: 00:41:08

With Android, they have with Android on smartphones.

David: 00:41:11

It's such a global platform.

David: 00:41:13

It's so big that open sourcing, a lot of these components for that foreign factor.

David: 00:41:18

Google knows that just because Android is already open source, somebody

David: 00:41:22

is going to steal all these things.

David: 00:41:24

Anyway, three, they're going to reverse engineer, or they're going to figure

David: 00:41:27

out a way to copy it, or they're going to use an APK without permission, like

David: 00:41:31

some Chinese phone OEMs do anyway.

David: 00:41:34

And they can't really put that cat back in the bag, whereas with TV and wearables

David: 00:41:40

and, you know, probably things like I'm looking at my, you know, nest hub, right.

David: 00:41:45

And that is one where Google has clearly decided an extreme level of control

David: 00:41:50

over the experiences, what they want.

David: 00:41:51

They want full control.

David: 00:41:53

I don't think the partners on smart displays can change anything about

David: 00:41:57

the software experience meaningfully.

David: 00:41:59

So it's interesting to see over like, Decade, how Google's philosophy has

David: 00:42:03

changed and how they've embraced.

David: 00:42:06

I mean, there is a certain power to it, right?

David: 00:42:08

Controlling the experience, and they can guarantee certain

David: 00:42:11

things work certain ways.

David: 00:42:12

But Kevin, like you said, that also, I think is leading them to make

David: 00:42:16

decisions where they're like, well, if we don't have to worry about this being

David: 00:42:19

accessible, then we can do it this way.

David: 00:42:23

And even in situations where maybe there isn't accessible way,

David: 00:42:26

they might be ignoring that off.

Kevin: 00:42:28

Yeah, it, it changes their focus is if you know, if the focus is just

Kevin: 00:42:33

about the user allowing customization, or even if the focus purely on the user,

Kevin: 00:42:38

but if they're thinking, and of course they should think about future development

Kevin: 00:42:41

where they're going to take things.

Kevin: 00:42:42

And I run into that.

Kevin: 00:42:43

I mean, every stock developer runs into this is what you build today.

Kevin: 00:42:46

How has that support in the future?

Kevin: 00:42:48

But.

Kevin: 00:42:49

It's David responsibility running the ecosystem and they've, you know,

Kevin: 00:42:53

started this ecosystem and then kind of restrict parts of that.

Kevin: 00:42:57

And it's we've seen that in other things as well, that like reading SMS messages.

Kevin: 00:43:02

There is privacy concerns.

Kevin: 00:43:04

There's good reason to make some changes there, but also it must stop estimates,

Kevin: 00:43:07

backup apps, or other apps that, you know, might interact with that task, I

Kevin: 00:43:12

think has, you know, weird workarounds for that and a bunch of other things.

Kevin: 00:43:16

And it's Yeah, it's a challenge to get the right balance.

Kevin: 00:43:19

And I think a lot of power users like myself kind of prefer the, the older

Kevin: 00:43:24

balance where, you know, there was, it was an, it was a bit more of a

Kevin: 00:43:27

free for all, but you could do a lot.

Kevin: 00:43:29

And now things are a bit more restricted, which is.

David: 00:43:34

So here's an open-ended question for you, Kevin, if of all the major kind

David: 00:43:39

of platform releases of Android over the years, and kind of not just restrictions,

David: 00:43:43

but changes in features, what do you think has been not the most impactful, but I

David: 00:43:49

guess when you look back, like what were some things that maybe you had to give.

David: 00:43:52

Or had to deprecate or otherwise work around that you feel like

David: 00:43:57

really unfortunately degraded the user experience in a way that

David: 00:44:00

Google hasn't since rectified.

Kevin: 00:44:02

It's interesting.

Kevin: 00:44:03

So my previous app before Navantia was widget locker, which customized the

Kevin: 00:44:09

lock screen and that it Andrew Andrew never supported customize the lock screen.

Kevin: 00:44:15

So would you lock.

Kevin: 00:44:17

Just abused API APIs.

Kevin: 00:44:18

It was it wasn't doing anything the way you should do it.

Kevin: 00:44:22

And it worked fairly well, but that was partially the.

Kevin: 00:44:27

The way users use their phones, then a lot less had security on their phone,

Kevin: 00:44:30

so they didn't have a pan or anything.

Kevin: 00:44:32

They weren't really fingerprint scanners.

Kevin: 00:44:33

So then having a fake lock screen could kind of work Eddy insecurity.

Kevin: 00:44:38

Would you like to try to work with the system security rather than

Kevin: 00:44:41

prevent like a fake security screen?

Kevin: 00:44:43

But there'd be challenges to doing that.

Kevin: 00:44:45

And then As time, like it's just kind of, every release would break

Kevin: 00:44:48

a little bit of which a locker and I'd find new workarounds,

Kevin: 00:44:51

but they wouldn't be complete.

Kevin: 00:44:52

And eventually I had to give up on it, I think, around a jelly bean or a

Kevin: 00:44:57

kick out or so for Nova launcher I mostly try to stick like I've avoided.

Kevin: 00:45:04

The workaround to support gesture integration with launchers like some

Kevin: 00:45:08

using Ru some launches, try to support the quick stuff API and they can act as

Kevin: 00:45:12

the system provider for gestures, and then they can get the more clean animation.

Kevin: 00:45:18

This is really impractical, even using root because it basically ties your

Kevin: 00:45:22

whole code base to one Android version.

Kevin: 00:45:24

So like you build it just for Android, 10 gestures, and then

Kevin: 00:45:27

Android 11 comes out and now you need to move your code base over which

Kevin: 00:45:30

breaks gestures on Android town.

Kevin: 00:45:32

Or you have two different code bases, one friend or 10, one friend rate 11.

Kevin: 00:45:35

And so it's really impractical to support this going forward.

Kevin: 00:45:39

And so that's why I've avoided it, which is unfortunate as I generally do.

Kevin: 00:45:43

You know, if I can add an extra feature for users with route.

Kevin: 00:45:46

But this isn't just a lot of work to do.

Kevin: 00:45:47

It's a lot of work to do every Android version and then breaking compatibility

Kevin: 00:45:50

or, you know, stop updating the new, have always just support the latest Android,

Kevin: 00:45:54

which would alienate a lot of users and most users aren't rooted anyway.

Kevin: 00:45:58

So gestures since the beginning has certainly been an asset there, but it's

Kevin: 00:46:02

not something that Nova once supported.

Kevin: 00:46:05

And then didn't, it's an Android as a platform added for what it

Kevin: 00:46:09

has supported and then removed.

Kevin: 00:46:11

The biggest thing, I guess, would be storage access.

Kevin: 00:46:14

So in this case very early on the way APKs you could access if

Kevin: 00:46:19

the case changed a little bit.

Kevin: 00:46:20

And so the theme format stopped working.

Kevin: 00:46:22

So like I think it started with paid icon themes.

Kevin: 00:46:26

They're installed encrypted from the play store and then launchers

Kevin: 00:46:29

kind of access them anymore.

Kevin: 00:46:31

So paid, I can, things kind of stopped working around jelly bean.

Kevin: 00:46:36

And so then we changed the theme form and it came up with a worker.

Kevin: 00:46:38

Then later on now they've had external storage restrictions, so

Kevin: 00:46:42

that hasn't hit Nova too hard, but like the backup restore system, I

Kevin: 00:46:46

had to change to compensate for this.

Kevin: 00:46:49

And also like beautiful widgets, which is the very famous which app back in the day.

Kevin: 00:46:54

And it hasn't been updated in many years.

Kevin: 00:46:56

The way that widget displays themes in itself Android 12 Android 11 broke

Kevin: 00:47:03

that if you target entered 11 or.

Kevin: 00:47:05

Which now the place still requires everyone to do so beautiful widgets.

Kevin: 00:47:09

It appeared the Nova update, broke it.

Kevin: 00:47:11

When Nova started targeting Andrew at 11, but really it's beautiful.

Kevin: 00:47:15

Widgets, no longer works with themes because of this change in Android about

Kevin: 00:47:19

how apps can access each other's stories.

Mishaal: 00:47:21

You brought up actually two pretty interesting points

Mishaal: 00:47:24

in your discussion there.

Mishaal: 00:47:26

The first of all was the deprecated lock screen widget functionality,

Mishaal: 00:47:30

which actually didn't know it wasn't was using APIs in a way

Mishaal: 00:47:34

they weren't intended to be used.

Mishaal: 00:47:36

So I thought it was actually like officially supported functionality.

Mishaal: 00:47:39

It's been years.

Mishaal: 00:47:40

It's been a long time since that that, that.

Kevin: 00:47:44

Widgets on the last screen was supported officially in Angeleno

Kevin: 00:47:47

locker predated that, and that was.

Mishaal: 00:47:51

Interesting.

Mishaal: 00:47:52

Yeah.

Mishaal: 00:47:53

I have seen some attempts to revive that functionality.

Mishaal: 00:47:56

One of my friends actually developed an application that uses Android

Mishaal: 00:48:00

system alert window API, to create an overlay on top of the lock screen,

Mishaal: 00:48:04

that inserts widgets of your choice.

Mishaal: 00:48:06

It's very AQI and it works, but there is a platform level.

Mishaal: 00:48:11

Returned to the feature that Google has baked into Android 12 and also

Mishaal: 00:48:16

somewhat makes available to OEMs.

Mishaal: 00:48:18

They call it their smart space widget, which is the code name

Mishaal: 00:48:21

for there at a glance widget.

Mishaal: 00:48:23

So it is possible for OEMs and platform developers to insert,

Mishaal: 00:48:27

which is on the lock screen.

Mishaal: 00:48:28

It's just not accessible to third-party developers.

Mishaal: 00:48:32

And the second point that you brought up is the theming of icons actually,

Mishaal: 00:48:37

which is something that Google is taking a new approach in with Android

Mishaal: 00:48:42

12, you could see the beginnings of it with their new themed icons API.

Mishaal: 00:48:47

So I kind of wanted to ask you two questions on that front.

Mishaal: 00:48:50

Why do you think Google hasn't added native eye contact

Mishaal: 00:48:55

support to launch a three?

Mishaal: 00:48:56

And what do you think of its approach to themed?

Kevin: 00:48:59

So native icon theming is kind of a there's a responsibility in doing it.

Kevin: 00:49:06

So if they're pre launch, I don't feel it's a big deal.

Kevin: 00:49:08

If I'm letting users steam, you know, with your Twitter icon, and now it

Kevin: 00:49:11

doesn't have a bird on it, but it has, you know, something different, a hashtag.

Kevin: 00:49:15

But from G if Google was doing that, then Twitter and other companies could

Kevin: 00:49:18

get pretty upset that their icons are being changed, but a arbitrary.

Kevin: 00:49:23

By some artists decided I'm going to draw it this completely different way.

Kevin: 00:49:26

It doesn't fit their brand.

Kevin: 00:49:27

And this is so that's very important.

Kevin: 00:49:30

And Google does work with other brands on this.

Kevin: 00:49:33

Like even the adaptive icons originally, they had to work out how to have.

Kevin: 00:49:37

When circle is a very important part of your brand that matters

Kevin: 00:49:41

for you and how that impacts if you're using an adaptive icon.

Kevin: 00:49:44

So I can see why they want, it wants to natively support icon theming

Kevin: 00:49:48

because of this responsibility, to the other apps in the ecosystem

Kevin: 00:49:51

that don't want their brand message.

Kevin: 00:49:53

So the way they seem to be approaching it right now, it's all hard coded in

Kevin: 00:49:58

pixel launcher, which is ridiculous.

Kevin: 00:50:00

And basically unusable you can't no, one's going to have a home

Kevin: 00:50:02

screen of just Google apps.

Kevin: 00:50:04

So then you mix and match and then it looks really bad because they.

Kevin: 00:50:07

But presumably they'll fix this where any app will be able to design their

Kevin: 00:50:11

own monochrome adaptive icon and then the system, or if they're pretty

Kevin: 00:50:15

launched or it can apply its own background and foreground color.

Kevin: 00:50:18

So I think this is it won't replace icon things as they are.

Kevin: 00:50:21

I can, themes are so diverse and they can change icons in any way.

Kevin: 00:50:26

Whereas this is much more than a.

Kevin: 00:50:28

But it's a nice, simple way that we'll let the system theme it nicely makes

Kevin: 00:50:33

it easy for developers to keep their brand by just designing a simple

Kevin: 00:50:37

monochromatic on which basically every brand has some form of already.

Kevin: 00:50:41

And yeah, it'll make the stock launcher look better and it would give third

Kevin: 00:50:45

party launch or some, you know, we could do more interesting things with it too.

Mishaal: 00:50:51

If you're an app developer listening to this right now, mark, my

Mishaal: 00:50:54

words make an adaptive icon for your app.

Mishaal: 00:50:56

Now get ahead of the curve because I am thinking it's very

Mishaal: 00:51:01

likely that this is the approach.

Mishaal: 00:51:03

As Kevin mentioned, that Google will use to bring dynamic coloring to app icon.

Mishaal: 00:51:08

And if you want, if you don't want your bike on to visually clash with

Mishaal: 00:51:13

others on a user's home screen, then you can start your work right now

Mishaal: 00:51:17

and be ready for whenever Google opens up and API for icon theming.

David: 00:51:23

Interesting stuff.

David: 00:51:25

Thanks for joining us, Kevin.

David: 00:51:27

And thank you for coming on to do a rerecord.

David: 00:51:31

After our unfortunate incident, this has been Android bites powered by Esper.

David: 00:51:37

If you're a company building an Android device, even if it's not a

David: 00:51:40

smartphone, even if you don't need something as powerful as Nova launcher,

David: 00:51:43

but you're just trying to figure out, okay, what is an Android launch?

David: 00:51:47

How do I use it to do what I need on my product Esper is a

David: 00:51:51

company that can help you out.

David: 00:51:53

Come get in touch with us.

David: 00:51:54

We're at esper.io.

David: 00:51:56

We build our own operating system based on Android, and we have our own lunch or

David: 00:52:01

two, but it's designed for businesses.

David: 00:52:03

So a little bit different.

David: 00:52:04

And in fact, very different from Nova launcher in almost every way.

David: 00:52:09

Kevin, where can folks find you and your projects?

Kevin: 00:52:11

I'm not very active on social media, but you can join the Nova discord,

Kevin: 00:52:15

which you can find@novalauncher.com or from Nova Elantra itself up settings.

Kevin: 00:52:19

And there's a icon for discord, an icon for Twitter, which is

Kevin: 00:52:23

Nova underscore launcher, or I'm Kevin slash slash on Twitter.

Kevin: 00:52:26

But I really haven't tweeted.

David: 00:52:29

Well, thank you for joining us, everyone.

David: 00:52:30

And we'll catch you with another episode of Android bites next week.

David: 00:52:34

That will hopefully be a lot smoother in terms of initial execution.