Once upon a time, the screen to the left of the homescreen on Google’s Nexus phones and tablets was called Google Now, and it was a genuinely useful feed full of contextual information about things like your commute, upcoming calendar appointments, package deliveries, and so on. This eventually went away as the screen, now Google Discover, was turned into a news feed. There’s now a way to get it back, but it’s unfortunately limited to those using Xposed on a rooted device.
When the first Google Pixel arrived, the Google Now Launcher was replaced by the Pixel Launcher and useful info was relegated to the At A Glance widget on the homescreen, which could only show one thing at a time. This was disappointing enough at the time, but Discover has become worse and worse over the years, to the point where it’s now full of clickbait content only loosely connected to topics followed by each user.
Discover (left) is far less helpful than the Snapshot screen (right).
The useful tidbits that used to make up Google Now are now accessible via the little in tray icon at the top of Discover or from the Google app/Assistant — this screen is called Snapshot these days. Our friend Kieron Quinn has quietly released an Xposed module that can essentially reinstate the Google Now of old by making the Snapshot screen appear to the left of the homescreen instead of Discover.
Can we all agree that this is what that page to the left *should* be used for? Like Google Now used to be, not the clickbait article list it is now. pic.twitter.com/n3aap93G95
— Kieron Quinn 💉 💯 (@Quinny898) August 16, 2021
The module, aptly called Discover Killer, isn’t limited to showing the Snapshot screen either — it can be used with any app on your phone so you can turn this page into anything you like. Sadly (for most of us), your phone needs to be rooted for this to work, and you need to have the Xposed Framework so you can install compatible mods on your phone. In an ideal world, Google would let us choose this instead of Discover on our phones, but I can’t see that ever happening.
Rooting isn’t quite as popular as it once was, so this won’t be a realistic possibility for most Android users, but for those of you who keep on trucking with it, this mod is worth checking out. For more info, check out the Discover Killer GitHub repo. You can also download it directly from APK Mirror.
