Get your digital neat freak on
Spring has officially sprung and that means it’s time to do some cleaning. This can involve decluttering, dusting, and drinking once you realize how much more cleaning you have to do. Unless, that is, the cleanup is digital, which isn’t backbreaking work. Developers behind the Niagara Launcher decided to do their own version of spring-cleaning with the app, tweaking some features and improving the user experience in general.
In a Medium post about the beta version of the Launcher’s update, Niagara’s creators use their new features to illustrate a three-step cleanup for your phone. With step one, you can take apps that you just don’t use often enough off your phone’s home screen, as Niagara Launcher will let you sort applications by frequency of use. In step two, Niagara suggests taking a good look at your app list in general and getting rid of anything that might count as a waste of time — or in the case of apps you’ve never used, a waste of space. The Launcher helps you do this with a new feature that lets you see the most recently-used apps.
Even more convenient if you just don’t keep the most organized phone in the first place is a list of hidden apps. Get a look at that by going to Niagara Settings > Features > Hidden apps. And the third step? Niagara suggests trimming the fat from your notifications with Android’s Digital Wellbeing feature, which makes it easy to spot apps that harass you with too many alerts. But the Niagara Launcher also summarizes notifications to minimize distractions but not get rid of the alerts altogether, which would be impractical.
Niagara did some work with haptic alerts too. In the past, the app’s creators say they didn’t do much with those, believing they weren’t really subtle enough. But using new, much more granular vibration control, Niagara came up with a totally revamped alphabet scrollbar. Now when you place the purple circle star icon at the top of the bar to scroll down, each letter has its own haptic bump, creating a pleasing zipping sensation if you swipe down from A to Z.
Additional improvements to the Niagara Launcher include multiple bug fixes, new animation on startup, and Material You icon packs that automatically update with changes in your wallpaper color. If you don’t have the app at all and want to check it out, the current, stable version is available in the Play Store via the link below. Niagara says the update will be available in a couple of weeks.
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