Pixel Launcher

Nice and simple, but lacks customization. For starters the "At a Glance" forced widget takes up too much space for simply showing a small weather icon the whole time. It wouldn't be an issue if you could customize the default look, such as options to showing the weekly or hourly forecast. I get the idea of a simplistic widget but at the same time it's a waste of space on the main screen.

When you open the app menu, there is no way to group similar icons, so everything is listed. This makes it difficult to find anything quickly. It would be great if you could create folders within the menu to group similar apps. Also when you play games, there is an option to put the phone into do not disturb mode. It would be great to be able to disable sound for games (which can be done using the Samsung game launcher on a galaxy phone).

There is no way to remove the Google search bar or even move it out if the way so you don't constantly tap it while using the phone one-handed. There is no way to group apps into folders in the app drawer and there is no way to manually sort apps in the app drawer. The rest of the launcher is lovely but I am very particular about clutter on my main screens and get very annoyed when my muscle memory for accessing apps gets reset. This is enough for me to not use this launcher..

Want more customization, like being able to hide google search bar and at a glance. At a glance takes up so much space, even when you hide most of the information. Also would be nice to be able to set the accent colors. Also, I always want the date and time on the top bar. It seems to depend on what screen I'm ok whether I can see date and time.

"This is an app that's related to what you're typing." I get that you're supposed to use the app dock, but the launcher's built in search should allow dragging apps onto the home screen. Android 12 and its supporting pixel-flavored app suite has a lot of good things going for it, but the UX feels half-baked at times. Apple runs circles around Google on this front (and many others), and you are actively losing customers because of it.

Forces you to have date widget at the top left, with a huge wasted gap of space to the right of it. Search bar is also fixed to bottom of the home screen, and forced to be the entire width. Completely arbitrary restrictions. Finally, the launcher has crashed several times, not so often to be distruptive, but a sign of poor quality code. As the launcher for a flagship phone, it's pretty disappointing.

Just bad, they're trying to give it a "pixel" vibe and it's full of limitation. No stacking in app drawer. Widgets fit awfully. No way to change, turn off or customize the two rows for a small clock in the main page or the search bar at the bottom I haven't used once other than for Google lense. No transparency in app drawer. And more pointless bs. Bought pixel for the best android experie, don't point in the iPhone direction, they make a better phone, I chosed android for what you're taking out

Not as informative as it use to be with the feed on the left screen (getting rid of snapshot and formerly Google Now) and it's pretty far behind other launchers (I'm using the launcher from Microsoft). I also moved away from this as the feed showed spoilers for movies and TV shows, and a lot of content that I'm just not interested in after years of providing my interests (the amount of data that Google has, I'm very surprised by how not smart the feed really is).

After reading several reviews, I too, am getting the same message of, "pixel launcher has stopped working." I can navigate around and find my way into my apps but I can't open up my home screen without this message popping up, so that makes what I want to do on my phone take twice as long. It gives me no option to uninstall or disable - that is greyed out. I'm sure the bugs are being worked out but its really frustrating!

It's difficult and unintuitive to get into the app drawer, I often end up in the multitasking menu instead. No way to move or remove the weather widget which is not as good as third party widgets and effectively wastes a whole row on your home screen. Search bar can't be moved or removed. I miss the days when Google offered customization instead of forcing you to do things one way.

This is just a shame that Google is not even providing basic customisation features in 2021, like the ability to remove the Google search bar from the home screen and app drawer. Also the lock screen clock and the "At a glance" widget are so annoying and what makes it worse is that not only you can't remove them, but you can't also resize them or move them. Apart from that you can still add any icon packs and neither are there any backup capabilities (I'm not referring to Google Drive Backup).

Recently, my phone has been glitching, with the app drawer and all the app shortcuts on my home screen disappearing. They were all just gone. I could only access the drawer from the top of the phone, no more app drawer at the bottom. Restarting fixed this the first time, but I didn't want to have to always do that. Saw that this app (which I know nothing about...) might be the issue, so I forced it to stop, and all apps are back. This app needs an update.

It's unintuitive to use, can't be customized much, and I hate that the search bar can't be removed from the home screens as it just gets in the way. I also don't like being told what to use or where to place things. This isn't "predictive", it's "presumptuous". I'd have given this launcher 2 stars, but considering it's built by Google for their own devices I expect much, much better. The whole thing is designed to push you toward the Google App, which in turn is just one big advertising trap.

Unusable. The launcher crashes multiple times a day, and doesn't restart on it's own. I have to go to settings to force stop and restart it. Clearing the cache does nothing either. Usually it happens after swiping left to the news panel, but it's done it under different circumstances too. It used to work fine but the past month, it's been garbage. I ended up installing a custom launcher instead.

I like the launcher, how smooth it is on Android Pie with the new navigation. However, 2 important features for me are missing: 1) swipe (down) on the screen or around the bottom bar to pull notifications. Similar to how swipe up opens the app drawer. 2) when google feed is off, allow to add more screens to the left of the home screen. Not just to the right.

I don't use the Feed, and I keep all my apps on one page. This launcher does what I want it to for the most part on Pixel 1 & 2. But a few design choices should really be turned into widgets and customization options instead, most importantly the new *adaptive icons.* The calendar/weather bar at the top should have a clock too. If I'm gonna have a permanent, immovable widget on my home screen, I shouldn't have to fit another widget underneath it to make it complete. I like where the Search bar is at the bottom; it makes docked apps easier to click on. But the bar should still be optional for those who don't like it. The white circle (or other shape) background for apps is horrid! It's inconsistent: all apps, including default ones, seem to make arbitrary decisions on whether to use the white background. Even Play Store apps that already supported adaptive icon shapes in previous Android versions suddenly find themselves packed into a little white squircular prison. And it especially hurts those with **visual or object-recognition impairments** who rely on the shapes and silhouettes of icons to quickly identify them. Google already made all the Play apps the same triangle shape, and now we're gonna shove those little samey triangles into little samey circles and reduce their distinctiveness further?

It's ok, but you really need to add the ability to organize our apps in the drawer. I'd prefer to use folders rather than just have a big messy list of apps organized A-Z. It would also be nice to have an actual icon on the home screen to open the app drawer instead of having to double swipe the little button at the bottom of the screen.

Lags noticably on a gen-1 Pixel XL. No way to accommodate large numbers of apps which other launches and even Microsoft's Android launcher do well, and the integration with the app switcher is bad architecture. Since it's shipped as part of the app, I'll include it in the scope of my review: the side-scrolling app switcher was a step backwards in interface design indicating that Google thinks it's more important to change for the sake of change than to keep perfection once it's found.

Having some serious issues with screen rotation not working or once it does rotate, it gets stuck in that orientation. Finally tried clearing the cache and it started working again. On going issue though as it keeps doing it after a while. Also, weather constantly disappears and to get it back, I have to add the "at a glance" widget to get the imbedded one at the top of the screen to come back. Then I remove the widget since I obviously don't want two on my screen. Please fix these annoyances!

For an OS that has always been about customizability. The default launcher is not very customizable at all. And it keeps getting worse every update. You can't remove the giant useless ( does not open clock or calendar like it used to) at a glance widget nor the search bar nor the apps at the bottom, which means you have like 30% of the space to do whatever you want.

Great minimalist launcher when it works, and the vast majority of the time it works great. But for the last week it's been crashing several times a day on my Pixel 5a and my partner's Pixel 3a, and only showing the wallpaper and navigation icons until you force close it. As with all Google products, support is basically non-existent and they have nothing to suggest except clearing app storage, which doesn't help.

It needs way more customization. I'm not a fan and I'm forced to use it because of the redraw issues on third-party launcher (when using gesture navigation) Google is refusing to fix. Double tap to lock screen is not here, more folder customization options, grouping, expandable dock... and many more features that can be found on third-party launchers. Get some inspiration from Nova and Microsoft Launcher, Google, or let us use those properly (fix the aforementioned bug).

I don't know what Google is thinking. This started as a very nice, simple, clean launcher. Every revision it gets worse. The latest on my Pixel 3 is terrible. What used to be a simple swipe to the app drawer now takes two swipes. The got rid of the app switch button for no reason whatsoever. Used to be you could double tap it to go to the last app, but that's impossible now. An unremovable Google search bar now eats up a ton of screen space. Ugh. Just terrible UI decisions all around.

The "At A Glance" widget is taking up so much space at the top, we can't customize the phone's colors/icons/fonts anymore because of this "Material You" thing that was supposed to give us more personalization over our phone, and I can't remove the Google search bar at the bottom. I could literally have 10 more icons on the first page by being able to remove these useless features. The Google search bar can be merged with the app drawer search bar and the news feed converted into a widget drawer.

Overall, I love this app. However, the last 2 days I've noticed I can no longer click on the slider and tell it. I don't wish to see anymore of certain content certain content. I appreciate this option coming back because it shows sometimes articles that are irrelevant or websites that charge which I'd rather not have pollute my experience.

My favorite launcher, but it's still sorely lacking in features. Like the ability to reorder pages, or set the default home page to the center instead of the far left (makes for shorter travel, and many wallpapers are center-weighted). Or the ability to access an app by sliding a finger across a folder instead of tapping it, such as the most used app in the folder. Consider Lawnchair, a popular open-source launcher based on the Pixel Launcher and that's about to go defunkt. Mine it!

Only two reasons why I don't want to use this launcher. Too high spaces between apps on the home screen (has anyone checked the final look??), and The search bar, the most annoying thing ever introduced by Google, it closes everything you open after leaving the app. We should be able to remove it!!! Not being able to remove the search bar is exactly why I hated Samsung for having Bixby, besides Appl which is for a totally different story...I don't want to use a different launcher, but I have to.