This Android launcher goes all in on widgets, and I absolutely love it

I’ve used almost every major Android launcher in recent years, some for a few days for testing purposes and others for years as the backbone of my smartphone’s home screen. These launchers range from the now-deprecated Nova Launcher to hot new properties like Octopi Launcher. Through it all, I’ve settled on Niagara Launcher thanks to its minimalist, productivity-focused design, which I’ve thoughtfully integrated into my daily workflow. However, as readers know, I’m always ready to reevaluate my choices and consider better alternatives. Today, I’m exploring AIO Launcher. Although I’ve seen many users recommend this app across various online forums, I haven’t spent much time exploring all its features. And wow, there’s a lot to uncover here.

At its core, AIO Launcher is unlike any other home screen on the market. It’s decidedly different from traditional products like Nova Launcher and Smart Launcher, but I can’t quite compare it to other niche launchers. The best way to describe it is as an amalgamation of Kvaesitso’s endless scrolling home screen and Niagara Launcher’s app drawer, but this isn’t a bang-on description.

For the most part, the launcher’s home screen consists almost entirely of built-in widgets, appealing to a former widget-crazed part of myself. Judging by that sentence alone, you’d think that AIO is a mess of shapes, text, and icons, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The developer focuses on functionality and productivity above all else. However, this does the rest of the launcher a grave disservice. It walks the line between function and form and does a splendid job.

I won’t pretend that AIO is an approachable app, though. Booting into its info-heavy, compartmentalized home screen is rather overwhelming. Getting to know this product is something you have to dive into with both feet and an open mind.

For me, an Android launcher should do two things really well. First, it should be an efficient trunk route through which all other avenues of your phone can be accessed. Second, it needs to look good and offer some aesthetic congruency and harmony. AIO accomplishes both in various offbeat ways, but unlike many install-and-go solutions, you do have to work to build the ideal home screen.

Setting up AIO involves selecting built-in widgets, of which 40 are immediately available. These are placed one atop another on the home screen, and users scroll vertically to access them. You can install additional widgets from the AIO Store, a official tertiary app, and through various scripts that add functionality. In total, there are over 50 different widgets options available — a customizer’s dream. This doesn’t even include available third-party app widgets.

Each widget offers a particular function. You can add the financial chart widget if you want to track the price of Bitcoin or Microsoft shares. Use your phone as a phone? Add the dialer widget that provides a full-size dial pad and avoids the need to hop into Google Phone. Want to display SmartSpacer info? That’s an option. There’s even a built-in audio recorder, expense recorder, and a calculator for quick tasks.

My current selection includes a clock, a weather forecast panel, calendar widgets, notifications, a system indicator breakdown, frequently accessed apps, system shortcuts, a currency converter, a news widget, a task widget, and a built-in timer widget. You can see my selection in the screenshot above.

AIO also lets you arrange these widgets to best suit your workflow. Notably, I’ve done this with Niagara Launcher and my favorite app list to significant effect. However, the difference here is AIO Launcher’s abundance of multifunction, info-heavy widgets; only a small portion of the screen leads me to apps. This isn’t a negative by any means, though. I’ve placed the shortcuts to frequently accessed apps widget near my thumbs, making selecting one of these a tap away.

This frees up the rest of the screen for informative but less essential widgets. These items that don’t require regular access are positioned below the fold, while my calendar and weather details are placed up top, where my eyes are more likely to land upon unlocking my device. It’s pretty easy to increase or decrease the size of select widgets, thus displaying more or less info.

Some of AIO’s widgets expand on a tap, revealing even more relevant information. Tapping the weather icon in the clock widget opens an extended forecast. Similarly, tapping on a date on the calendar widget opens the complete list of events on that day, while tapping the sidebar of the notifications widget shows the complete list. Want to access a recently saved file? Tap on the Storage line in the system monitoring widget. Tap on an RSS entry in the news widget, and a pop-up with the entire article (depending on the source) will appear. This lovely piece of functional design is by far my favorite aspect of AIO.

So, yes, app shortcuts are a far less integral part of AIO Launcher than Niagara, but this doesn’t mean finding apps is a chore. Swiping right-to-left on the screen edge opens an alphabetical grid of all available apps, which expands to a list when tapped. AIO Launcher includes a unique categorization feature that places similar apps into related baskets to further speed up access and bring some order to the process. Apps like Inoreader and Google News are placed in the News/Feeds category, while Deezer, Musicolet, and Podcast Republic slot into the Music/Audio category. I imagine spending time categorizing apps would further speed up the launching process, but I never quite felt the need for a boost.

Another tremendous strength of AIO Launcher is its aesthetic congruency, which is supported by its myriad theme options. There are 11 available to free users, and three additional options and editing tools are added for paying consumers. Pick a theme, and the launcher will adjust the widgets’ text and background colors, shapes, and other home screen facets. I found little desire to deviate from the Material You theme, which also supports dark mode, but AIO also offers a Paper theme which transforms the home screen into an e-paper playground.

Search plays a pivotal role in all modern Android launchers, and despite its desire to cram everything on the home screen, this is true for AIO Launcher too. The app’s talents in this regard are surprisingly impressive. It supports regular text search, but can level up retrieval through bangs. Adding !gp ahead of the search term ports you directly into Google Play Store’s search, for instance. There are several supported apps, too, including:

• !nf: Netflix
• !yt: YouTube
• !gt: Google Translate
• !m: Google Maps
• !spy: Spotify

I couldn’t find a complete list of operators available within the app, so your best bet is to use @ or ! in the search field, followed by an app’s name. If a bang is available, the app will highlight it.

By default, AIO’s search results page also includes related chips for Google Search, related World Clock info for cities, details from the News feed widget, Notifications, Contacts (if you give it permissions), and direct search within apps. The app also searches through those aforementioned app Categories and lists matching actions within apps. Searching “news” opens the option for a new session in Termux, such as the News and Tips portal within the Samsung Members app. It’s a hugely influential feature that further accelerates access to information. Holding the search icon on the search page also opens up direct access to a select number of apps — a feature I rather stumbled into.

One only needs to tap the search button on the home screen to trigger a search, though. But this innocuous shortcut hides the heart of AIO’s settings ladder. A long press on the home screen opens a flyout menu housing shortcuts to Android’s settings page and three AIO-related options: AIO Settings, UI settings, and Change theme.

AIO Settings houses the bulk of the launcher’s buttons and levers. Here, you’ll be able to adjust various visual and functional items, including those widgets I’ve mentioned, which are activated and deactivated here, app settings, search tweaks, and more. The Settings menu is a tad overwhelming, and I would’ve appreciated a built-in search option for the page itself. Nevertheless, it is a room you get more familiar with the longer you spend in it.

So, AIO genuinely excels at forefronting useful information, providing a powerful search product, and offering users a dizzying number of buttons and toggles to push and pull. But there are other smaller features I’ve grown to love about this launcher.

Profile support is a huge boon, especially since tinkering is the heart and soul of AIO Launcher. This feature allows users to save widget configurations and states and reapply them.

AIO also includes support for various actions and gestures. The free version only allows two options: Swipe the widget to the right and Pull down. However, the premium option allows seven additional options, including controls over the phone’s physical buttons. This will be a welcome sight for Nova users who are heavily reliant on gestures.

I should also mention that AIO Launcher has a host of power user-adjacent features, including Lua, Tasker, and ChatGPT integration. The latter is a subscription-only feature and powers several smarts across the app. These include categorizing apps, responding to prompts within the search results, a translator, and notification filtering. All these sound like brilliant uses of AI in a launcher, but I’m not convinced they’re really needed. Nevertheless, this option is available for those who want to support the developer.

I can spend hours praising AIO Launcher for doing something different and defying the norm, but it’s not yet the complete article.

As noted, AIO Launcher supports third-party widgets, but searching for them is a chore. Instead of a traditional widget browser that you’ll find in other major launchers, which lay out all available widget options, you’ll have to use the global search function in AIO or long-press the app icon itself. I found this process pretty frustrating, especially as not all widgets are supported. I would also appreciate an option to select widgets directly from the home screen editing mode.

On a less impactful note, I would appreciate more options within the default widgets. For example, the weather widget exclusively draws its information from MET Norway. There’s no option to change the provider, and that’s a shame. I can’t help but be annoyed by the lack of wind direction info, too. You’re provided with the wind speed, but not the component, which is a pretty important weather detail in my part of the world.

But, honestly, I’m really nitpicking here. As a whole, AIO Launcher is an exceptional product that accomplishes much of what it has set out to do. Its innovative use of customizable information-heavy components to meet my intentions makes for a surprisingly productive and functional home screen. Sure, it has its annoyances, but these minor blips could easily be fixed over a few updates.

The big question is: will AIO Launcher replace Niagara as my home screen of choice? Considering that I’ve invested several days into crafting a home screen, I believe it already has. I might even fork out for the premium version.