Summer Update

What’s new in Niagara Launcher?

For those who prefer reading a blog article instead of watching a video, we’ve prepared the following piece, which covers the same content as the video.

🎤 For reviewers & press: We bundled all media assets for this update here. Feel free to use them.

🔽 We are rolling out this update on Google Play throughout the next days. If you want to download it immediately, please visit our beta channels.

The Summer update for Niagara Launcher is here, and we are happy to announce three major changes that will improve your Niagara Launcher experience.

New Invite Program 🎁

We are excited to introduce our new invite program. Here’s how it works:

• Invite a Friend: Invite your friends to download Niagara Launcher, and they will receive a 50-day free trial of our premium version, Niagara Pro. This allows them to explore all the fantastic features Niagara Launcher has to offer.
• Reward for Sharing: As a “thank you” for sharing Niagara Launcher, you will also receive 50 days of Niagara Pro for each friend who starts their free trial.

To invite your friends, go to “Niagara settings,” select “Community,” and tap on “Invite a friend.” If you have any questions, please check out our Invite Program FAQ.

Anycon Voting Results ✨️

Next, let’s dive into the results of our first Anycon voting.

Anycons are our integrated icon packs designed to create a beautiful home screen effortlessly. The idea behind Anycons is to design individual icons for the most popular apps and assign category-based icons for the rest so that, ultimately, every app gets an icon.

Earlier this year, we invited you to vote for your favorite apps to receive their own icons, and we were thrilled by the response. Over 12,000 users participated, and thanks to your input, we’re adding 101 new icons!

Upgraded Search Feature 🔎

Lastly, we have significantly upgraded our search feature.

• Contact Search: You can now message and call your contacts directly from the home screen.
• Web Suggestions: Quickly browse the web by searching for terms and see the results instantly.
• Integrated Calculator: Perform calculations right from your home screen and get the answer without opening any extra apps.

Both the built-in calculator and web suggestions are free, while contact search is a Niagara Pro feature. Navigate to Niagara Settings > Features > Search to enable these new features.

Tweaks

• 💼 Support Work-Profile Calendar Events
  Our calendar now displays events from your work profile if your device administrator allows it and other conditions are met. Check our help page for more info.
• 🌟 Use Anycons accross more places
  More home screen elements now use Anycons, such as home screen messages (e.g., the Notification Summary Arrived message) and buttons (e.g., that appear when you edit your favorites).

We also released a QoL update shortly before this one containing the following changes:

👀 Quality of Life Improvements

• Integrate our help and feedback section: This new settings section adds useful links to our knowledge base about using the launcher, Niagara Pro, commonly requested features, and commonly reported bugs, grouped into easy-to-understand categories directly in the launcher.
• Add Anycons explanation dialog: Add a new dialog, accessible from the icon pack selection dialog, that illustrates Anycons and their benefits.
• Anycon tweaks: Add audio recorder & video app category icons and add aliases for some categories.
• Group clock settings: Since there are quite a few clock-related settings, we now group them inside a separate clock settings menu.
• Wallpaper collection: refined the experience when browsing and picking wallpapers from our collection.
• Niagara Coin: There’s now a shiny ripple animation when the coin lands. Because it utilizes new shader APIs added in Android 13, it only works on devices with at least this version.
• Safer secret commands: Some secret commands now require explicit confirmation before executing from the search. Furthermore, their functionality is described in the confirmation dialog for some of them.

🐛 Fixes

• Fix the screen being blank for a bit after returning home: This animation bug only occurred in rare edge cases.
• Tweak accidental home button press detection: The launcher ignores a second home button press shortly after the first one to prevent accidental presses. We now only ignore that second press shortly after returning to the home screen, so users can quickly close our search screen with a home button.
• Fix OneDrive shortcuts not being added to the home screen: The OneDrive team has thought of a very creative way to add shortcuts to the home screen. When the user adds a OneDrive folder shortcut, OneDrive multi-track drifts two shortcut APIs at the same time, which causes some misbehavior in the launcher. We now handle this case correctly.
• Apply clock style even when clock is tiny: Previously, the new clock styles were only applied if the clock was big enough. Now, they are also applied if the clock is tiny. The clock will use a condensed appearance if there’s not enough space or when rotating your phone to landscape mode.
• App icons: the icon assistant indicator for automatically assigned apps is now reliably shown on the screen where you can edit individual icons.
• Fix S24 theme color: Workaround “auto” theme color being mostly dark gray on Galaxy S24 devices.

Closing Words 👋

We hope this update brings something exciting for you. If not, don’t worry — our next update is already in the making. We’re researching what makes phone use addictive and exploring how Niagara Launcher can support forming healthier phone habits.

If you’ve got some feedback, you can share it with us in our Subreddit, Discord Server, or Telegram discussion group. For reporting bugs, please use our issue tracker on GitHub.

Have a wonderful time, and see you in our community chats.