I'm looking for an app icon widget for Sense that has the following properties....I have tried what feels like dozens but there are so many I simply can't try them all.
Ability to hide specific apps that I don't want displayed (so, a blacklist not a whitelist)
No text labels
Ability to be clear or at least mostly clear (see the wallpaper behind it)
Scrollable!
Preferred 5 column grid but not absolutely necessary
The closest I've found is the Folder organizer widget, but it doesn't seem to refresh the apps list ever so anytime I add a new app I have to recreate the widget again. Also, the scrollable function only works in third party launchers (not Sense). I have tried Launcher Pro and ADW but not a huge fan.
Shane112358 said:
I'm looking for an app icon widget for Sense that has the following properties....I have tried what feels like dozens but there are so many I simply can't try them all.
Ability to hide specific apps that I don't want displayed (so, a blacklist not a whitelist)
No text labels
Ability to be clear or at least mostly clear (see the wallpaper behind it)
Scrollable!
Preferred 5 column grid but not absolutely necessary
The closest I've found is the Folder organizer widget, but it doesn't seem to refresh the apps list ever so anytime I add a new app I have to recreate the widget again. Also, the scrollable function only works in third party launchers (not Sense). I have tried Launcher Pro and ADW but not a huge fan.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to remember that sense is closed source, so it can only do so much. Most widgets that I've found have extra functions for 3rd party launchers such as the ones you've listed.
If you want to hid or get rid of apps, the only way to do that is to hack-uninstall the apps (from what I've been reading around here). Not sure about being "clear", could you be more clear with that? I'm guessing you want transparent widgets?
You can use Desktop Visualizer to help you with your hidden text labels. I use that in combination with folder organizer and launcher pro. Launcher Pro is pretty well designed IMO. It does what sense does, plus more and there's a lot of widgets that seem to support it. You should take a look at the Launcher Pro screenshots created here, there's a lot of excellent customization that I believe will meet your demand. It's possible that you haven't found the look you want that will be efficient for you.
groovdafied said:
You have to remember that sense is closed source, so it can only do so much. Most widgets that I've found have extra functions for 3rd party launchers such as the ones you've listed.
If you want to hid or get rid of apps, the only way to do that is to hack-uninstall the apps (from what I've been reading around here). Not sure about being "clear", could you be more clear with that? I'm guessing you want transparent widgets?
You can use Desktop Visualizer to help you with your hidden text labels. I use that in combination with folder organizer and launcher pro. Launcher Pro is pretty well designed IMO. It does what sense does, plus more and there's a lot of widgets that seem to support it. You should take a look at the Launcher Pro screenshots created here, there's a lot of excellent customization that I believe will meet your demand. It's possible that you haven't found the look you want that will be efficient for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your thoughts. Does LauncherPro have scrollable email and agenda widgets like Sense? (I know it has messenger although I don't love the implementation...)
Related
Can anyone tell me the pro's and con's of both launchers.. I might give them a try sometime next week..
you can try yourselve both its better than reading. ADW Launcher users tell you adw is faster beter etc and LP userr tell you the same about LP just try it.
I use adw about 1 day and I change to LP becouse I dont use all options on adw he have a lot settings Lp is easyier for me.
or try zeam very quick and low memory usage
If a launcher doesn't have touch wiz like app drawer it's useless. Hundreds of apps aren't manageable in other ways.
I choose ADW because it's more smooth when swiping between homescreens. And there's a lot of themes for this launcher, too. I have tried LP but it's not that good. It has better widgets though.
I switched to ADW, launcher pro just isn't as snappy. The app bar is a nice feature too. Launcher pro does have some nice widgets though.
Launcher PRO PLUS for the widget and popup!!!
Bec07 said:
If a launcher doesn't have touch wiz like app drawer it's useless. Hundreds of apps aren't manageable in other ways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Launcher pro is not able to arrange applications ?
EarlZ said:
Launcher pro is not able to arrange applications ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, at least not yet
frauhottelmann said:
Nope, at least not yet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But it does have the very cool scrolling 3D app drawer where everything is in alphabetical order. I find it much much easier.
Launcher Pro has really nice widgets. Also ADW hides the status bar on me every so often - not sure why... very annoying and makes it unusable.
Bec07 said:
If a launcher doesn't have touch wiz like app drawer it's useless. Hundreds of apps aren't manageable in other ways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what makes touchwiz a great launcher.
I really hope LP follows suit, I need a customizable app drawer.
btw, ts I use launcherpro, /w donated version.
The widgets that come with lp are irreplaceable
I've tried both and love that lo is capable of hiding bloatware apps. Since I'm new and not into rooting, I like that I can get crap outta my face if I don't want it!
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App
brendonsled said:
This is what makes touchwiz a great launcher.
I really hope LP follows suit, I need a customizable app drawer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But the fact that you can't hide icons make it horrible for me. That's a major reason I use LauncherPro, apps that already have homescreen shortcuts or that I don't use wont clutter up my app drawer.
ADW has the same feature I believe, I might try it sometime.
The actual process of organising apps in touchwiz into some reasonable order is so slow and painful that I couldn't stand to do it anyway. Alphabetical order with all the crap hidden works just fine for me.
A nice feature that was added recently to LauncherPro is changing the grid size in the homescreens. You can use that to get more fine control of your widget positions and to fit more shortcuts and widgets. You can choose whether or not to re-size the widgets according to the new grid as well.
i personally like LauncherPRO better than the rest.
it works & feels very much alike ZLauncher from PalmOS
it has all the options i was exactly looking for.
well worth the $3 for the extra features, even though i don't even use them
I use LP plus.
I´ve used the option to hide stuff that I install, and insted have a folder for games and one for tools on my home screen. means that the app window wont get cluttered up.
Both are really good and I won't say one's better than the other.
I've always used ADW since I owned the Magic and the launch of the Galaxy, and in that time I've flirted with LP but alwys went back to ADW, however, last week I tried LP again and I've stuck with it this time.
Basically I can't choose between both but I'm extremely happy using either, try both and make your choice.
frauhottelmann said:
Nope, at least not yet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi
what you can do is :
creat folders on the last home screen for exemple.
lets say a games folder : stick all your games in it, and go to LP settings, take the link for the game apps you put in that folder and hide them so they dont apear any where else.
i dont know about adw but LP has scrollable widget possibilities and combined to some market aps it really is neat.
as usual its allways a question of personal preference.
plemen said:
Launcher Pro has really nice widgets. Also ADW hides the status bar on me every so often - not sure why... very annoying and makes it unusable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
your disappearing dockbar is probably due to you pressing the app drawer and swiping upwards. Just go to ADW settings and disable the dockbar. This dockbar is a relatively new feature that enables you to have 2 dockbars (something similar to the scrolling LP dockbar).
ADW has a custom groups feature in its app drawer so you can select what apps you want to see. Unfortunately you can only view one group at a time, but its definitely a much better way of organising your apps than just in alphabetical order. And you can hide apps easily this way too. I really like ADW's swipe actions on home screens as well, last time I tried LP it didnt have this option.
Despite all the features of ADW, Launcher Pro feels just way snappier. Its customisation settings are well enough. The widgets are good too.
Too bad it's not open source like ADW. A may goto ADW when the animations are made smoother.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
s there away to have launcher pro but still have htc sense?And with the widgets?
yes you can swicth between both
technically no because sense is basically a launcher over top of standard android. its either one or the other. however launcher pro has sense themes on their site if you dont really care about the sense widgets much.
This should be in Q & A and not Android Dev...
jahnile said:
This should be in Q & A and not Android Dev...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like the others said, you can have both Sense & LauncherPro, & switch between them, but you can't have the Sense Widgets on LauncherPro. There are plenty of look-alikes in the market you can use though.
additionally if you get launcherpro plus you get a decent replacement for most of the sense widgets that have been remade for launcher pro and can resize widgets which is prettynice.
Add SwitchPro to that mix and you've got everything you need! Heck, between the triple-scrolling task bar at the bottom, 8 SP slots for all my radios and functions I access, three normal shortcuts, and a resized calendar widget, I have everything on one home screen.
Not to forget that you can get up to 7 by 9 icons on the home screen and a rolling apps listing in "3D".
EasyHome
I use an app from the market called EasyHome. It places shortcuts of different launchers on your homescreen! I have sense, adw-launcher, launcherpro, and an experimental AndroidWindows7 launcher.
arcadia2uk said:
Not to forget that you can get up to 7 by 9 icons on the home screen and a rolling apps listing in "3D".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh i thought yuo could do those with the non paid version! even more bonus.
I have had the paid since it came out so hard to keep up with all the benefits there are tons. worth every cent.
Why would you want it
Thread moved to Q&A.
Why would you want it
i could see someone who really likes the sense widgets wanting to but thats why launcherpro plus has recreated them. with out purchasing any apps(or launchers) it is very hard to replace all the sense widgets with something that is as good as what sense has (widget wise).
If you look you can find many that are close but a lot are paid apps. personally i still think your best bet is to simply buy the plus version of launcher pro and as mentioned switchpro. between the two and a few free apps you can replace almost every sense widget.
while its easy to ask why would you its not hard to see why someone would want to if they didnt have knowledge of which apps to get to replace the sense widgets and lets be honest looking for anything in the market is no easy task if you dont know its name.
I'm not going to ask which launcher or anything like that. I already have one in mind if I do decide to go that route.
What I want to know is if they are worth it or not? Do they slow the phone down at all? As it seems as an overlay to an overlay.
I see some, like nova, have a add-on for unread counts for messages and calls and things. Is this saying that without this add-on I won't have a count for missed messages or a notification at all?
Thanks you for the input
launchers
In comparison to the stock LG launcher you'll find you'll actually have a smother experience. Launchers like holo or nova are really light weight and have a smaller footprint in memory than the stock launcher. When you choose a new launcher as default the lg launcher is closed. Or at least resources are being prioritized to the default launcher. I'm a beginner when it comes to how android handles processes so maybe someone else can offer a better explanation. The addons for nova add unread counts to icons on homescreens, app drawer and folders. You'll still get all notifications through the status bar. Its just eye candy and extras you get for the paid version of the launcher.
BadFish79 said:
I'm not going to ask which launcher or anything like that. I already have one in mind if I do decide to go that route.
What I want to know is if they are worth it or not? Do they slow the phone down at all? As it seems as an overlay to an overlay.
I see some, like nova, have a add-on for unread counts for messages and calls and things. Is this saying that without this add-on I won't have a count for missed messages or a notification at all?
Thanks you for the input
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Won't hurt to check out other launchers. If you dont like them simply uninstall and your back to where you were
ADW is old school and basic, I prefer that. Holo is decent so is Apex, but my go to is always Nova. They're all fun to play with.
It's worth it. I use Nova and it's faster and has more organization and customization options than stock LG or AOSP. Just the speed and being able to hide apps from the app drawer is worth it for me. For reference, Nova runs way faster on my Nexus 7 than the JB launcher.
lots of good options. Nova is a great one, but I like Apex and Holo.
To answer your question, if you don't install extensions, then you won't have the message count on the app icon, but that's all it does. I personally don't like it, so I have never installed it.
Honestly though, if you aren't a "power user" who likes to tinker with all of the options in the launcher, Apex, Holo and Nova are all very similar.
Can someone explain the dock as overlay option? Isn't the dock always visible on the home screen?
Sent from my LG-LS970
BadFish79 said:
Can someone explain the dock as overlay option? Isn't the dock always visible on the home screen?
Sent from my LG-LS970
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Default, the dock is basically an extra row of icons ON the desktop, that carries over from screen to screen.
Dock as overlay changes your dock to being a row of icons that is on a layer separate from your desktop. As an example, you can turn this on and turn on a slide up gesture to toggle dock, which would give you a kind of mini app drawer on top of the desktop. If you did not turn this on, toggling dock would bump your desktop icons up and down, as it would then be a part of the desktop and not be a layer on top of it.
I'm fairly new to zooper and am using nova prime. I use folders to make things tidy, while at the same time having access to all of my frequently used apps. I am wondering if it is possible, and if so, how would I create a widget (I want to create a text widget with transparency) that links or is the cover to a folder. Is this possible?
Thanks much and great app..
MatroxD said:
I'm fairly new to zooper and am using nova prime. I use folders to make things tidy, while at the same time having access to all of my frequently used apps. I am wondering if it is possible, and if so, how would I create a widget (I want to create a text widget with transparency) that links or is the cover to a folder. Is this possible?
Thanks much and great app..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm also using Nova and still haven't been able to figure this out. In the mean time, I use simi widget but I would like to have Zooper support folders on its own. I can create them in the app drawer, but Zooper doesn't recognize them. Did you ever find a solution to this, or are you just using a third party app?
I was never able to get this to work with Nova. I also tried many of the other popular launchers including Apex, ADW, and Smart Launcher, but none of them worked either. What is required is a launcher that allows creation of a shortcut to a folder or group or something. To date, I've only found two launchers that do this: Themer and Lightning Launcher. Both are good, but for me, I really like the amount of configurability of Lightning Launcher. If you put in the time to work with it and combine it with Zooper, many of the "effects" that Themer tries to simulate, such as slide out drawers which have to be done with multiple screens a lot of widget duplication, can actually be made truly functional in Lightning Launcher. Check here to see a great example of this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/themer/zooper-templates/one-theme-t2790386
Post your homescreens. Discuss your widgets. Have fun.
Please, to keep this thread as light as possible, attach screenshots to your reply or post direct links.
My homescreen:
Quick toggle bar at the top is done with PowerToggles. It's the best if you're into quick toggles.
From the beginning of smartphone usage, I depended on homescreen folders for my most used apps. For that purpose, I use Folder Organizer, to which I added a custom folder icon.
Since Nova is my launcher, I decided to replace square dock icons to the round ones by downloading a Lollipop icon pack, extracting what I needed and applying it through Nova. Looks much better, IMHO.
Also, I'm in the process of playing with XWGT instead of Zooper Widget, since XWGT has a much lower memory/cpu footprint to create a widget that has a day/date with a recording function integrated into it. That way, I removed an extra widget from my homescreen and integrated it into the day/date widget.
P.S.
I would like to ask the mods not to close this thread like they closed the first one, because LG Spirit does NOT have it's own forum section, and is purely tag based. So, if mods don't like homescreen threads ending in Misc Dev sections, they should create a proper LG Spirit forum section on XDA.
My homescreen,mising cLock widget (from cm12).
Since I like not cluttering my homescreen with tons of icons and widdgets, I just don't have anything on it. And since Nova allows to rebind the soft keys to open the app drawer, I don't even need the dock. The only exceptional thing about my homescreen is the wallpaper - I'm using an LWP with a custom GLSL shader. I can drop that here if you would like the code for yourselves.
Nova launcher
Lots of crap out there
@jonixas You got a real Playstation thing going on there
I had one that I liked better, but an update to the app caused all my shaders to dissapear, and I couldn't recreate the one I had. Also, obligatory PCMR> Console peasants
Very basic. Default launcher, default weather app, replaced google app with quick search bar (or something like that) and some contacts. Decided to use the homescreens for only widgets, every app is accessible via the app drawer. Wallpaper is from Backdrops.
This is one older screenshot, but basics are pretty much same
Launcher: Nova Launcher Prime (paid for it)
Icons: Sunshine+Moonshine+Polycon
Widget: XWidget - ZTE Nubia Style, Flashlight widget
Wallpaper: my photo
When finish tweaking design on phone and when setup 4 more e-mail accounts to phone I would post latest home screen... It is a quite changed then this one (from wallpaper up to widgets which I have)
Mine is pretty simple.
Nova launcher
Yahoo weather widget
Wallet app and Quick camera widget
Here is my many-year-old setup, except that I only lately started having 6 dock icons, instead of 5.
Wallpapers from unsplash and some pictures by me + Muzei, Nova Launcher and Glim icons
Wallpapers from unsplash and some pictures by me + Muzei, Nova Launcher and Glim icons
Thread closed.
Perhaps next time, you should post in an appropriate forum (namely a non-development forum).