One of the oldest custom launchers on the Play Store is still going strong
Nova Launcher has held a permanent spot on any roundup of the best Android launchers for the better part of a decade now, and it’s still in active development. It wasn’t even a year ago that we saw the official launch of 7.0, bringing a full visual refresh and other updated features to anyone willing to download the app from the Play Store. Today, the dev team is back with the start of an all-new beta. Nova Launcher’s first 8.0 preview is here, and it’s coated in Material You goodness.
The team behind Nova announced the arrival of today’s beta on Discord, but the APK is available for anyone to grab and check out. The full list of patch notes is relatively limited to start, but the biggest change is obvious as soon as you boot up the app. Material You is here, pulling colors from your phone’s background to paint the search bar, settings menu, and other elements of the phone in a new shade. It’s not the first launcher to build in Google’s dynamic theme, but it’s great to see an Android mainstay include it here.
Speaking of the settings menu, it’s completely redesigned from the ground up — and not just for Material You colors. The menu isn’t a perfect match with Google’s current look, but it’s pretty close and, in my limited testing, feels a little easier to navigate compared to the older look. Nova is chock full of tweaks and options, so digging around to find exactly what you’re looking for has always been difficult — it’s why search is so helpful. With any luck, this redesign will help in this regard, even with a simple new coat of paint.
Those might be the most noticeable changes, but this first beta has a few tricks up its sleeve as well. Digging through that redesigned settings menu reveals some new swipe gestures for the homepage, as well as a new Align Bottom option for immersive folders. Finally, some under-the-hood tweaks are here as well: everything is based on Android 12L’s AOSP launcher, along with some bug fixes for early Android 13 launchers. Here’s the full changelog.
- Material You – Custom color schemes based on wallpaper colors
- Redesigned Nova Settings
- New swipe left/right desktop gestures
- Align Bottom immersive folders
- Rebased on Launcher3 Android 12L
- Android 13 fixes
You don’t need to join Nova’s Discord group to try out today’s beta. Just head over to the group’s official website and download the most recent APK to give it a shot. As with any open beta, expect some bugs or other issues in the early days. For everyone else, plan on a stable build sometime in the coming months.
