topic Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI in Samsung Lounge

Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 20:19:45 GMT

Hi Everyone.

Planning on getting my next Galaxy phone.

But I wanted to ask Is there a good third-party launcher for Samsung Galaxy phones that is fully compatible with Android 11's gesture navigation and that enables you to hide apps easily similar to Oxygen OS & MIUI? (As I heard Samsung's One UI is notorious in "restricting" gesture navigations functionality within One UI but i'm not sure if that changed now.)

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

mstratford — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 22:28:48 GMT

Niagara Launcher seems pretty groovy, has clever search and seems a lot less glitchy than the likes of Smart Launcher 5. Can hide apps

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

LiquidSnake — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 06:17:00 GMT

I'm not gonna lie, but Samsung have really improved when it comes to gesture navigation. Just select gestures instead of navigation buttons in settings and on top of that, download Good Lock and look for the module One Hand Operation. Download that and you will make the phone highly efficient via gestures 😎.

Regarding hiding apps, I've heard they are going to tweak this feature in the upcoming One UI release as well as in Android 12 relatively soon. So, I'd say don't download a third-party launcher if you are planning on getting a Samsung Phone that's on the market now 😁. Hope this helps! 😀

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

LiquidSnake — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 06:19:05 GMT

In addition, just search on YouTube as well as looking on reliable websites; how to make (phone name) all gestures with Good Lock and you will have a blast 🤓.

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 15:59:53 GMT

gesture navigation is still broken on 3rd party launchers since android 10, Google hasn't done anything to fix it. It's not exclusive to one UI.

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 18:47:19 GMT

But Samsung created One UI. Surely, the coders or developers can sort out a workaround?

And if One UI is still "broken" for Android gestures navigation then why Oxygen OS and MIUI aren't?

Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

walkerx — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 19:55:18 GMT

If you want a decent launcher other than the stock launcher which compared to what it was like years ago, then Nova is the main 3rd Party Launcher and has recently had a major upgrade.

Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 19:29:26 GMT

Oxygen OS and Miui are still broken with android gestures and 3rd party launchers, when using the default Google implementation. Some OnePlus devices or xioami might have propiatary implementations like Samsung does but they aren't as fluid overall as the Google ones which are the ones most would use. Either way this issue is present on *ANY* android device post-10 and while it may seem to be better on a certain model, it can even vary between devices. I've seen it be reasolabley usuable on my phone for example where it then out of a sudden goes back to the glitchy, and not being able to go to task viewer manner

Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:06:08 GMT

In my experience using a OnePlus phone (8T) and a Xiaomi (Mi11 Lite 5G) despite having "near stock"/skinned Android their respective performances are very much commendable than a Samsung (such as S10+, S20 FE and A52 5G). And i'm not talking about benchmarks here.

I've also used a third-party launcher (the most well-known ones with a review of 4.5 & above and paid ones) on a Samsung and performance is poorer than everything else i've used previously and Android gestures remain "broken" unlike the two phones i've mentioned here.

So, how can you further explain that?

Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 23:50:40 GMT

Performance, that's not really something I was talking about but I'm not gonna deny the fact they may be better performing. However gestures are broken on 3rd party launchers on any android phone since 10. Sometimes they will work near enough find, other times it's unusuably bad. That's still part of being broken, it's not consistently gonna be "fine" on any phone even if it's the same model. I've also had experience with Samsung phones (a51 5g and S20) with these gestures and it's the same with 3rd party launchers on other android devices with gestures I tried (OnePlus Nord, Moto g7 power). Neither has provided a smooth or stutter-free experience. What I'm saying is that if it does for you, that's not unprecedented as I've seen cases of it working fine for some but not for others even with the same model. The truth is, it's still not fixed and it's all on Google, it's not consistently gonna work "well" on different devices and when it doesn't the experience is garbage.

Also another thing, it's simply not down to the launcher developer. They can't do anything to fix this. Nova launcher is a good example:
https://novalauncher.com/faq/gesture-navigation (an old article I know, but there hasn't been a fix. Their discord server has a channel dedicated to gestures and how it's) broken on most android devices (pixels it's a bit better due to an animation API)

Fyi, gestures on 3rd party launchers has been disabled since miui 12.5 apparently. That's likely just due to how much of a buggy mess it is for *many* (not all, some may be lucky) users out there, that it's probably best not to use them

Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 19:48:40 GMT

I agree with you on some things but i also disagree with you on others.

As I have mentioned Android 10/11's gesture animations on a OnePlus device (8T) and a Xiaomi (Mi 11 Lite 5G) are not broken, they work almost seamlessly and have/had no issues with them. SI, I repeat...THEY ARE NOT BROKEN. Unlike Samsung. Their developers needs to learn a thing or two from them companies.

I can understand it's not the third-party launcher's fault due to Google's difficult/stubborn stance on gestures and I accept that. But are you saying that If I have a Pixel phone the gestures and animations would be better than say Samsung?

I must insist that Oxygen OS and MIUI (& by extension Poco launcher) on their own so far have met my needs on a smartphone OS. If they can do it then why can't Samsung emulate them? Why can't Samsung developers figure out why the aforementioned OSes just keep getting better and One UI falling behind? TBH I still can't get my head around it.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 18:58:13 GMT

I can't get my head around why this is either. It doesn't seem to be company based on how well this works (OUTSIDE of Google, as they added a special API in the pixel version of Android 11 to make gestures a bit more fluid with launchers). I've seen devices from the same company, some work well or reasonably with gestures on launchers and others don't. There's no link between why this is. My own phone is Samsung and when I got the phone I used to use gestures with a 3rd party launcher (lawn chair). It worked fine on mine but not on a friend's S20 I tried. A couple months later it started becoming way more stuttery and really just unusuable, out of nowhere. No software updates or anything caused it. And that S20 now seems to work fine with gestures.

Again, I have no clue why it's this iffy with how well it works but there's nothing that other companies outside of Google have done to improve gesture compatibility with launchers. The API Google uses just adds a nice animation for closing apps and is exclusive to pixels for now, other companies use the default Google gestures and cannot modify them to work in a different way. So any variances we notice are simply down to the unpredictable nature of how these gestures behave. There's nothing companies can do to change anything about how they work, as Google doesn't let companies modify the default android gesture navigation beyond UI or app opening animation (on the STOCK launcher). I've tried gestures on devices from Xiaomi/oneplus which are badly behaving with launchers in the past, it's not down to the company.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Sun, 03 Oct 2021 19:29:54 GMT

So, Is Google intentionally preventing Samsung from allowing smoother/seamless gestures and animations (especially when closing apps) when a third-party launcher is installed?

And why Oxygen OS and MIUI is able to circumvent those APIs or "bottlenecks" and able to deliver a better UI than that of Samsung's?

Or is Samsung just digging their own hole and just avoiding the issue altogether? Coz in my eyes they sure are not listening to user feedbacks anymore.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 15:28:52 GMT

Oxygen OS and Miui are not in a different position to Samsung, and it's all due to Google's botched gesture implementation. It's inconsistent between users and sometimes works fine but other times not so and it's between devices of different companies. I have no idea why this is but I've observed this from my experience with not just Samsung and Xiaomi but other companies as well. Some of these will just work fine, others not, and it's not company based

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Gino76ph — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 19:41:52 GMT

So, that goes back to my original question: Is Google intentionally doing this on purpose? Or "secretly" favouring one company to another?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Third-Party Launchers & One UI

Qwerty7 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 17:18:46 GMT

Google isn't favouring any company over another as I've said this behaviour happens on devices not specific to one compnay, I doubt they would do it in purpose. It's most likely the case that Google really has no intention to fix gesture stability across devices or well, haven't bothered to do so.