Niagara Unfolded
Getting ready for Foldables
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🎤 For reviewers & press: We bundled all media assets for this asset here, feel free to use them.
♻️ Update 21 Sep 2021: We added a two-column layout for wide screens and updated the article.
♻️ Update 06 Oct 2021: We rolled out this build to everyone on Google Play!
Foldable phones (also called foldables) are the first tablets you can carry in your pockets and are the latest trend in the smartphone industry. With this update, we don’t want to jump on a hype train blindly but take the opportunity to ensure that Niagara Launcher feels right on every device, not “just” your regular 6.0" phone (or foldable).
🗺️Optimized for Foldables
Ultra Slim and Wide Screen Support
The paradox about foldable phones is that they can offer an extremely narrow and wide screen simultaneously (at least the most popular models in the western market).
The wider the screen, the more likely you hold it with two hands and further away from your eyes. That’s why Niagara Launcher splits the app list into two, moves content (e.g. the app list and the scrollbar) further away from the edges and slightly increases its size so that everything is still easily reachable without having to bend your fingers. Furthermore, we reworked the algorithms that position the scrollbar and determines the top margin of the app list based on your current screen height.
We also fixed tons of landscape mode issues (e.g., the scrollbar did overlap with navigation buttons, and the keyboard covered the entire screen when searching for an app, etc.).
2c Layout
2c was our internal codename for the new two-column layout optimized for two-handed usage. 2c turns on when unfolding a wide screen foldable and is always enabled for tablets. (If you prefer the one-column layout, go to Niagara’s settings > Features > and turn off Enable two-column layout. This toggle only appears on the inner screen of foldables or on devices with large screens.)
On regular phones, we’ve added a new landscape mode that also makes use of this layout. To enable it, go to Niagara’s settings > Features > and turn on Allow home screen rotation.
Dynamic Icon Scaling
Home screen and pop-up icons will scale along with your device’s current screen height. We also added smaller icon sizes for you to choose (Niagara settings > Look > App icon size) for those who fancy tiny icons.
App Continuity
When unfolding your foldable or rotating your screen, you can seamlessly continue where you left off in Niagara Launcher.
Keyboard + Mouse Support
Since many people use larger screens for productivity, Niagara Launcher also supports hardware keyboard, mouse, and stylus usage. Here are two powerful new keyboard shortcuts:
- Type any letter to start app search directly
- Type number n to launch the nᵗʰ app on the list
New Wallpaper ‘Threefold’
This is a wallpaper I made in Blender, specifically for Foldables in mind. Of course, you can also use it on regular phones. I hope you enjoy :) You can download it from our Wallpaper collection (Niagara Settings > Look > Wallpaper collection).
Speaking of wallpapers, we added the option to offset your wallpaper to fix centering issues of some wallpaper apps (e.g., the Samsung wallpaper). You can enable it in Niagara’s settings > Look > Offset wallpaper.
What’s next for foldables?
We restrained ourselves from adding gimmicky foldable features that don’t fulfill a specific need and hope you’re happy with the tweaks we made. If there’s anything else that we can do for you, feel free to open a ticket on our issue tracker. A foldable feature I’d love to see in the future would be shortcuts to launch multiple apps simultaneously in split-screen mode; however, that function is unfortunately reserved for system apps. Oh, and we can’t optimize Niagara Launcher for the Microsoft Surface Duo yet, but we reached out to Microsoft to work on a solution.
🎁 Bonus: The Niagara Button is Out of Beta
The Niagara button is a shortcut to your favorite app, widget, folder, or other action and is a full replacement for the Google Button. More on that here.
🍬 More Goodies
- You can now launch Niagara’s agenda via KLWP! For that and other new changes to our KLWP API, please read this article.
- We added custom shortcuts and better pop-up integration to the Niagara button, which is currently in beta; more info here.
- You can now hide app shortcuts from pop-ups.
- We can now offer free trials in India again!
- If you have the Sesame integration enabled, Niagara Launcher will show up to three in-app-search results (to forward your search query to other apps).
- Sheet dialogs now load their content faster.
- App-options dialogs are now sheets.
🐞 Bugfixes
- Fixed: Swiping away notifications inside pop-ups caused them to scroll to the bottom.
- Fixed: Icons were accidentally scaled up when the screen resolution changed (e.g., caused by the battery saver being enabled).
- Fixed: Sheets dialogs did not always expand on larger screens.
Thank you very much for reading; I hope you enjoy the update disregarding what phone you use.
Peter
