Smart Launcher 5 is here to dominate your home screen

The Smart Launcher Team has released its latest launcher app: Smart Launcher 5. The new app, the sequel to Smart Launcher 3 featured in our best Android launcher list, arrives after two years of development.

The team outlined some of the new launcher’s features in a recent blog post—and it appears to be quite a departure from its predecessor. The characteristic “flower” app pattern is gone and its navigation drawer has been reimagined.

Smart Launcher 5 is built around a new design language called the Acrylic Design System. This is a set of internal guidelines that aim to make the design consistent across all elements of the interface, and it’s something that should marry up nicely with two of the other new features: Ambient Theme and Adaptive Icons.

Ambient Theme is a system that changes the interface color based on the wallpaper the user has chosen (below), while Smart Launcher 5 brings Android Oreo’s Adaptive Icons to devices running early software versions.

Smart Launcher Team

The team has also integrated a new search bar into the bottom of the launcher, with multiple functions like finding apps or contacts, or performing calculations, and the ability resize widgets without snapping them to the normal grid (something that should please enthusiasts).

These are just a few of the improvements brought with Smart Launcher 5; the developers have clearly put a lot of work in. There’s a large focus on design and aesthetics—you can even sort apps by color—but function doesn’t seem to have been overlooked. 

Smart Launcher 5 is available for free with optional in-app purchases (you’ll keep features you’ve previously paid for if you’ve used Smart Launcher 3) and you can find it at the Google Play Store at the link below. The listing says it’s still in beta, but it looks pretty full-featured.

If you check it out, don’t forget to give me your thoughts on it in the comments.