A refresh on blisslauncher?

/e/OS Smartphone Operating System Features & Applications
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TL;DR: the default launcher on e/OS is great, but feels dated, and missing some crucial functionalities. Let’s discuss what they are, in the hope to inspire the dev team to take a look to this tool, central to the e/OS experience!

I love BlissLauncher. I know it’s not necessarily the case for everyone, but I do. It’s my favorite. Doesn’t mean it’s perfect, far from it.

I recall that the 2023 roadmap spoke about refreshing BlissLauncher, notably adding widgets on any screen.

Now, we got many great updates since 2023, many of which where actually planned in the yearly roadmaps. e/OS is very usable, very user-friendly, and a great daily driver for my phone (Pixel 7a Lynx). I love it, it’s here to stay.

However, my dearly beloved BlissLauncher does feel quite dated. Some of my grief with it include :

  • Moving the apps around is clunky, and managing folders is far from easy.
  • The widget panel is rough, not being able to reorganize widgets without deleting them is a pain, and some long widgets cannot be navigated (i.e. lists cannot be scrolled down)
  • We cannot use widgets on any other screen than the widget panel on the left, which is a bit sad.
  • Search functionality is minimal, only looking for apps, and without fuzzy search. I would love for it to also look for contacts, music… More stuff.
  • I’d love to be able to “hide” an app from the launcher, instead of stuffing all of them in a “Misc” app folder. They should still be accessible through search, IMO.
  • The appearance itself could be improved, with better visibility/color/contrast. Maybe even using adaptive colors ?
  • The folders are bare-bone functional. They are not visible on the main screen, too bland and transparent. Better arrangement for app icons in folder containing less than 9 apps would be great.
  • Long app/folder names are truncated, which isn’t ideal.

Despite all these little issue, I find that BlissLauncher is still the best launcher to me. I do not like app drawers, and I haven’t found any alternative to BlissLauncher that suits me more. Even worse when caring about privacy like many of us do.

This post is not asking for suggestions of alternative to BlissLauncher. I’m aware of them, I’ve tried them, and always come back to Bliss. Heck, i even used bliss before I used e/OS, sideloading it on lineage OS. It’s my favorite, period.

I just wish Murena devs would give it a little bit of love and make it as polished as the rest of the OS : after all, the launcher is our main point of contact with the whole OS.

What other features/suggestions would you like to see get implemented in BlissLauncher ?

~ Cheers

7 Likes
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I love bliss too. I would also add that a screen displaying a list of all apps at the end would be great.

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I love is simplicity and light functionality.

I would love it even more if it offered a way to hide apps.

2 Likes
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Interesting idea. Kind of what iOS does? Or more like an app drawer?

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Even better, to lock some of them behind a fingerprint check.

And change app icons!

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It seems like what you want is actually another launcher than Bliss. I agree that it’s too simplistic for your needs, but category auto-sorting seems well beyond small UI improvements. Plus, it works very very poorly in my experience, especially when using less well known apps from f-droid, like many of e/OS users do : they are not categorized as well and often end up mismatched.

But if you feel bliss is not powerful enough for you use, why not choose a more versatile and hackable launcher? It’s actually quite easy to switch.

Simple launchers with few configuration options are quite rare. They are many “minimalist" one that are great, but really try to turn you away from the phone (indeed that’s the whole point if a minimalist launcher). It’s too limited for a more normal use case. I believe it’s important to allow a diversity of systems to co-exist to accommodate different profiles if users.

I used to be a Nova Launcher enthusiast, and could spend hours tweaking and configuring new launchers, changing frequently in search if the best tool. Now I enjoy simplicity out of the box.

I just wish that Bliss’ simplicity would be a bit less dated.

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Yes, kind of what IOS does but the app would be displayed as row not as a randomly organized set of folders

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Just for clearness: Not auto sorted, auto is never good (because what you get is never what you expect). App icons should be manually categorized (because only the user can define categories) and manually arranged so that the screens get the shape the user wants to have. You are the user, you install the apps, you start them when you need them, so you must be able to manage all this everyday, not a too simple algorithm in background you have then to live with.

Usable launchers are generally rare. There’s indeed only a handful. The others have trackers, complicated blown-up GUIs, stupid round corners everywhere, sudden crashes or they are generally search based (I never understood this concept).

1 Like
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I found my peace with LawnChair and Arcticons for a streamlined icon package after using Launcher a while. It has an app-drawer, handles widgets, you can put apps on a grid where you want, sort them as you wish on the screen. I’m no longer looking at alternatives.

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Good for you! Lauwnchair is indeed a good tool!
But this is missing the point of this discussion which is “how to improve Bliss”, not “what else can we use instead”.

1 Like
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What I dislike about BlissLauncher is that in 2023 or 2024 (I dont remember properly) the Murena team made it impossible not to have apps’ icons be on any place on the screen but forced them to “start” from the left upper corner to mimic the iPhone which had it for years, and the same year iPhone changed it and enabled putting icons on any place on the screen.

Please, bring back the function of putting icons on any place on the screen.

2 Likes
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As I try to keep my interaction with my smartphone as minimal and efficient as possible, I really like the minimalist design of the Bliss Launcher. What I personally miss most is the ability to use app shortcuts by long-pressing the app icon. This makes it much quicker to create a note, record an expense, etc., and I had become very used to this workflow with my previous smartphone.

1 Like
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Strangely enough, the last e/OS livestream for the reveal of e 4.0 talked about improvements to BlissLauncher !

But unless I missed something, it’s actually pretty mild… I think they only talked about new wallpapers ? Or was I both blind and deaf ?
They say “a small change, but big impression”, but calling new wallpapers a “launcher refresh” is… pretty stupid.
Maybe they plan other new features and refresh for Bliss, but they do not say a word about other plans.

I still love e/OS, Murena, and BlissLauncher. Even though I’d love an update, Bliss is fine as is. But I think they should not have mentioned something so minor in a presentation about the next major version of the OS. It feels disingenuous.

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I love Bliss launcher. There is only one tiny feature I am missing: to be able to lock the positioning of app icons and to prevent Apps beging deleted.

This issimg feature is the principal reason why Bliss does not work for senior citizens in my family.

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Settings > Apps > Bliss Launcher > Additional settings in the app > Lock layout

locks the position of app icons, although despite what its description suggests it does not prevent accidental removal.

3 Likes
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I was hoping for some improvements to be included with 4.0 release too. To me is pretty clear, there won’t be any.

I’m against installing addional apps, but might look around for another launcher offering hiding apps.

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I updated to 4.0 pretty effortlessly, but there are indeed no changes to Blisslauncher. Well, the wallpapers are here, but that’s all.
I still feel a bit frustrated that they teased an update to bliss only to amount to this. It didn’t deserve such a spotlight in the livestream.

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I wouldn’t expect too much. Bliss hasn’t made any significant progress in the last five years. So it’s rather improbable that it suddenly happens now.

Bliss is there for only one reason: people must have something in the first moment and this should just work under all circumstances. If they want more they can always use something else but then it’s in their own responsibility.

I guess this principle will not change as long as no other aims are formulated. Such an other aim could be: impress people (or even companies) by visible features to get more users.

1 Like
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People looking to enjoy simplicity out of the box without all the limitations and a much better ergonomic than Bliss should definitively try the LineageOS launcher :

→ APK of Trebuchet on XDA

IMO this should be at least proposed as an embedded alternative to Bliss in eOS, android users should have an option for an android launcher, because to write it simply : iOS UI sucks ! :wink:

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The simplicity and straight forwardness of the trebuchet launcher is good.

However, I really dislike app drawers, and trebuchet, like most launchers, rely on them.

Bliss offers a nice touch of diversity by trying to cater to another paradigm. More diversity in interfaces is more choices for the user, and that’s good!

I wish Blish would take a page out of trebuchet, building the great little customisation functions and shortcuts, quality of life improvements, but keep it’s identity and main interface characteristics (no drawer, a page for applets on the left, pull from top to search… Etc)