9 Cards is a beautiful smart launcher designed to make your life easier

One of the greatest things about Android is that the experience can be whatever you make it, thanks to custom launchers, icon packs and other apps that allow you to tweak various parts of the Android UI.

What if you are already (mostly) content with your Android experience just the way it is, but wouldn’t mind making it just a little bit smarter? 9 Cards could be exactly what you are looking for. Instead of a traditional launcher, 9 Cards is billed as a “home launcher” that compliments your existing launcher — whether that’s Nova, Apex, or stock Android.

So what exactly does 9 Cards do? Basically the app/launcher automatically analyzes your apps and puts them into special categories. Over time, 9 Cards will further track what apps you are using and when, allowing it to refine the options it gives you. There’s also an “add new” section within each category that will give you app suggestions based on your usage patterns.

Accessing these collections of apps is as easy as sliding your figure up from the bottom (like the default Google Now pattern), or by dragging down from the top right. The latter of these actions will even bring up a mini-toolbar that looks a tiny bit reminiscent of the Unity dock found on Ubuntu.

Some of the features that 9 Cards offers can already be found in contextually aware launchers like EverythingMe, but 9 Cards has the advantage of also working on top of your existing launcher of choice. 9 Cards can be downloaded for free from Google Play, though there’s also an optional premium upgrade that offers a few extras for $2.99.