Nothing promised during its March “The Truth” event that it would launch its first phone in the summer, but the company also wanted to offer a glance at the software it’s shipping with it ahead of time in the form of a third-party launcher. That day has finally come, and Carl Pei’s new brainchild has released the Nothing Launcher to the Play Store. It’s currently in beta and only available for a handful of phones, but if this is what awaits us in Nothing’s first phone, we’re pleasantly surprised—even though we found ourselves chuckling about Nothing’s special Big Chungus “Max Icons.”
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Installation & look and feel
The installation and setup process wasn’t particularly intuitive on my Pixel 6. This is a problem with any third-party launcher, but the Nothing Launcher seems to perform worse than others here. After installing the app in the Play Store, you’re only presented with an option to uninstall it again, and you also won’t get a shortcut to launch it for the first time from your regular home screen. Instead, you have to head to system settings and set it as your default launcher. This might be an issue that is fixed once the launcher leaves its beta phase, though.
Once you’re up and running, you’re presented with a minimalist 4×5 layout, showing a few of your pre-installed Google apps as well as Nothing’s signature wallpaper. At first glance, everything feels very familiar when you’re coming from Google’s Pixel Launcher. Even the Google Search bar has its dedicated spot, though instead of being placed at the very bottom, it sits between the dock at the bottom and the individual home screen panes at the top. The Google Discover feed on the right is missing, though.
Other things are right where you’d expect them. You can long press icons for further options, and swipe up to reach the app drawer where all of your installed apps live. Just like on the latest Pixel launcher, you can set the keyboard to launch automatically when you enter the view, making it easy to find the app you want to open without sifting through the list first. Unfortunately, you actually have to tap the app you want to launch once you’ve used the keyboard to find it, and search only works for apps. The Pixel Launcher lets you simply hit the enter key to launch the first result, and doesn’t only work for apps but also for contacts, settings, in-app shortcuts, and more.
The launcher also offers a first glimpse at Nothing’s “bespoke” widgets that come bundled with it. Due to limitations with third-party launchers, you need to look for them in the widgets overview and add them manually if you want to play with them—I bet Nothing would have put them on the first screen by default otherwise. I don’t particularly like the aesthetics. The digital clock and the weather widgets are pretty hard to read at a glance due to the font, but hey, nothing is forcing you to use them (pun intended).
Special features
The Nothing Launcher has some neat tricks up its sleeve. First and foremost, it ticks an important box by supporting custom icon packs (like most third-party launchers and even some first-party launchers). While Google is hard at work at creating a unified look with its Material You-themed icons, Nothing is taking a shortcut and gives you access to any icon design you could think of right out of the box.
The more unique feature is probably something else, though, and we’ve had a good chuckle about it here at Android Police. Nothing has added so-called “Max Icons and Max Folders” to its launcher. If you’ve ever used a Windows Phone, this should be familiar, as it allows you to increase the size of an app icon or folder, making it stand out of the crowd and easier to access.
While these overly big rounded icons look absolutely hilarious at first glance and I really wanted to hate them, I can actually see how they could be useful and even stylish when used sparingly. The over-blown icons very much remind me of how Google approaches things with its over-engineered Material You widgets, going big and bold for the sake of aesthetics more than anything. And it’s great for accessibility, too. Folders actually work really well with this aesthetic—definitely better than individual apps. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with either Big Chungus styling or the regular size—there are no granular options to be chosen here.
A first glance at the Nothing Phone 1 experience?
All joking aside, the Nothing Launcher is pretty neat if you want a simple home screen that doesn’t go overboard with bells and whistles, all while feeling pretty close to Google’s Pixel Launcher, too. It’s awesome to see support for custom icon packs, and it’s promising that gesture navigation plays relatively well with it, which has been a problem for many third-party launchers for a long time.
Even if you may not love Nothing’s marketing strategy, this launcher feels like more than just a PR grab, offering a genuinely useful and well thought out product. If this is any indication for what awaits us with the Phone 1, we might very well be in for a pleasant surprise.
You can download the Nothing Launcher on the Play Store, but be prepared to be left out. Nothing says it’s only available for the Samsung Galaxy S21 and S22 as well as the Google Pixel 5 and higher. Support for OnePlus devices is supposed to come soon, too. Nothing also has some of its wallpapers and ringtones for you to play with.
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