So I ordered an /e/os compatible phone, should be here any time. I’m going to load up /e/os and give it a try.
My last phone was a Samsung and my current phone is a Motorola. I’ve been on the OEM Android those come with and I’ve become accustomed to the the stock launcher. I’ve seen photos of the Bliss launcher and I’m not sure I’m going to like it.
Can the Bliss launcher be customized to look like the Google/OEM launcher? Otherwise is there an open source launcher that would be similar to the Google/OEM launcher.
You can install whatever you want beside Bliss, also several ones. Of course only one can run.
You willl see that the very most launchers in App Lounge will show you 2…7 trackers. That’s why I call them crap. In F-Droid you find a number of free open source (FOSS) launchers, search based or icon based.
Good old Lawnchair is still one of the better ones in my taste.
Thanks, I’ll keep Lawnchair in mind as one to try if I don’t like Bliss. I’ll just have to try Bliss and see if I like it, I know they’ve added some customization in recent versions.
The main thing I want is a clock, weather, and search widget on the home screen. I could probably live without a swipe up app tray. I do like a de-cluttered home page with just a bottom icon row.
I read that blog you quoted and that brings up a concern. He says he wrote Bliss from scratch due to “special needs” for /e/os. So does that mean if I run a different launcher I could have problems with the interface?
I would say that no. As I understand the part of the article you quoted, the developer decided not to use code of the existing Android AOSP launcher when writing Bliss; however, it is not mentioned that the code of /e/OS was modified to accomodate for Bliss.
I am using Lawnchair 14, and I have not experienced any problems. The same was also the case when I used Neo Launcher. My suggestion would be to just download and try the launchers you want. If there are any problems, you should still be able to enter the /e/OS settings and switch back to Bliss.
Thanks, sounds reasonable. I’ll try Lawnchair if I can’t get past Bliss.
My phone just arrived today, charging it now. Going to load /e/os on it in a bit here. It’s actually pretty nice for a three year old phone, managed to find one new in box for cheap, OnePlus Nord. I have a brand new top of the line phone I picked up last month, but it’s not /e/os compatible.
Thanks, Lawchair is really close to what I want, but I can’t move the search bar. Don’t like it on the bottom. I’ll try OpenLauncher.
Thing is Bliss could work for me if it let me put widgets including search on the home screen. What I mainly want is a home screen with clock, weather, search, and bottom row of icons. Then if it let me disable the swipe right screen and swipe down search screen it would be perfect for me. I doubt I’ll ever see customizations like that, but I’ll note it in a feature request anyway. I don’t see the logic at all in putting widgets on a swipe screen.
You could also try Neo Launcher and Pear Launcher, both very similar to Lawnchair (but not forked). Seems that Pear Launcher is also not able to have a Search bar on top, the options are “above” or “below the dock”, and the dock is always at the bottom. (I never used a Search bar …)
Actually I think Lawnchair can work for me. I realized I don’t need the search bar. I use the search bar for web searches and when set to a web search all it does is open the browser. I can just put a browser icon in the dock and accomplish the same thing, six of one half dozen of the other. So that’s not a problem, I just disable the search bar altogether.
The only thing that’s giving me trouble with Lawnchair 14 is the weather widget. It’s not displaying the bottom row that shows the 5 day data, works in Bliss, but not Lawnchair.
In any case I’ll check out the Pear and Neo Launchers. What I like about Lawnchair is it’s open source with no trackers or ads.
I don’t know where you get your Weather widget from. The stock one? You could easily install any other weather app and use it’s widget. You are not bound to the one you have at the moment.
Ah, and you can change the size of a widget. You must tap on it and hold your finger there, then you get a sizable frame. This way you could make the missing line of icons visible.
I’m using the Bliss Weather widget. I like that Widget a lot and would really like to use it, but in Lawnchair it’s missing the bottom 5 day forecast data. The widget is allocated the full 4x3 space, just the data is not there.
Another problem is I can’t enable notification dots. It asks for “Device and app notifications” but when I try to give those (through Special app access) it comes back with Restricted setting. Bliss launcher has those permissions, but I can’t give them to Lawnchair. I rely on those notification dots a lot.
Lawnchair can show notification dots without problems. The problem is Android 13 with it’s new restricted mode for some apps. You can switch this off manually. Look here in the section under “2 answers”. Apps which are unrestricted do not have this three-dots-menu, restricted apps have it and there’s only one menu item in it. Once you made your app unrestricted the menu disappears.
I tell ya, Android is really good at hiding settings. You never know where they’re going to put something, bars here dots there switch menu here. Those switch menus are especially confusing, is it a switch is it a menu or both, who knows. I think AOSP is doing it on purpose just to mess with us. In any case I would have never thought to look there for a restricted apps setting so thanks for that.
I found a couple good weather apps that have nice widgets so I think I’m set there. Time consuming prospect to find them and try them. In any case Lawnchair seems to be shaping up nicely for me.
I have to wonder though, why did the /e/os devs go against the grain here. I mean okay if they wanted to write their own launcher, but why depart from the AOSP standard. It’s what everyone is used to. I’ve spent a good amount of time working around that because I really-really don’t like Bliss launcher.
The question is: for what? They implement a general feature to limit the behavior of some apps (only they can predict their names) which is switched on by default and then they provide a mechanism to work around this. This all in the name of “user safety” or whatever. (And in the same second they suck data from that very safe device.)