When Android phones first took off over a decade ago, custom launchers were all the rage. The idea of completely transforming your phone’s look and feel was a huge draw for enthusiasts—and even non-techies. Today, however, launchers are almost unheard of. They’ve largely fallen out of favor in favor of whatever your phone came with, and frankly, I think that’s for the better.
Custom Android launchers used to be a big deal
Everyone loved them
It’s hard to describe the hype for custom Android launchers you downloaded off the Play Store if you didn’t have an Android phone back then. Everyone from my mom to my high school friends (myself included) complained endlessly about the awful stock TouchWiz Android skin that Samsung used. Other Android brands, like HTC, Motorola, and LG, weren’t much better either.
While you couldn’t remove the skin altogether short of rooting the phone and flashing a custom ROM, you could at least change the launcher to make the home screen and app drawer cleaner, smoother, and, most importantly, more customizable. That’s essentially how legendary app launchers like Nova Launcher and GO Launcher made their names.
Aside from completely transforming the layout, these launchers added an incredible number of features that most Android skins didn’t have at the time, like changing the app drawer layout (vertical, horizontal, or tabbed), grid size (e.g. 4×4 to 5×5), adjusting app icons, labels, and sizes, hiding specific apps from the drawer, all kinds of custom gestures and animations, and so much more.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though; the real charm launchers added were the visual overhaul.
You could make your phone look completely unique by changing the entire UI with a new color scheme, icon packs, animated wallpapers, and more. Two people could have the exact same phone and launcher installed, but it would be hard to tell because they were using completely different themes.
Despite the extensive built-in features and customization, these launchers were often smoother and less buggy than whatever custom skin came pre-installed on the phone. Now, I’m not even sure if this speaks to the quality of these launchers or just how awful the stock experience on some phones truly was.
Default launchers finally caught up to what custom launchers used to offer
Everything is built in now
Custom Android launchers offered a lot of customization back when few Android phones had any meaningful flexibility in their default launchers.
However, things have changed dramatically over the years, as manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, Xiaomi, and even Google with its Pixel line learned what users expect from their Android phones. We wanted more customization, and over the past few years, we got it in spades.
The most high-profile example is Samsung’s One UI, which completely reworked how Samsung phones look and feel. The UI went from bloated, heavy, and laggy to clean, smooth, and fast. It only got better over time, with more features and customization options added with each generation.
Many brands, including Samsung, now let you download custom themes that completely overhaul the system. Unlike app launchers of the past, these themes go well beyond the home screen and app drawer and apply across the entire UI. You can also install custom icon packs, and if you want to make your Samsung truly your own, you can use Theme Park to customize nearly every detail you want.
Even if you don’t download and install anything custom, the stock Android experience and the little features various manufacturers add on top already provide a healthy amount of customization that most users realistically won’t go beyond.
- SoC
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
- Display
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6.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x
If you want an Android phone with a customizable system, the Samsung Galaxy S26 is a fantastic pick. It also happens to be one of the best flagship phones on the market.
Custom launchers feel redundant now
They rarely add anything new
While some custom launchers might still technically provide an even greater level of customization than the average OEM Android skin, most of these features can now be dismissed as gimmicks. Even if my phone doesn’t support custom cube or flip-style animations when swiping between home screen pages, do I really care?
The same goes for other power-user features that launchers add, such as custom gestures like swiping up on your camera app to open the gallery or take a photo, customization of individual app icons, overkill 12×12 grids for fine-tuning app and widget placement, custom docks accessible by swiping from the edge of the screen, ultra-fine folder organization, and so on.
It’s easy to see how these advanced features are overkill and can feel more like confusing bloat than a genuine benefit for the average user. If a feature is genuinely useful, there’s a good chance the manufacturer has already added it—or a close equivalent.
Plus, the way we use our phones is heavily app-based, so we only spend a fraction of our time on the home screen anyway.
A launcher adds friction more often than it adds value
One issue that has plagued Android launchers from day one is that they tend to crash or cause random issues. While things have gotten better as phones became more powerful and developers became more skilled at squashing bugs, it has never completely disappeared.
Remember, a launcher has to work across a wide range of phones and on top of all kinds of user interfaces, and with each new system update, there’s always a risk that something will break or stop working as intended.
Getting back to the home screen or opening the app drawer in an unconventional way, like via the “Recent Apps” screen, can sometimes cause you to open the phone’s stock launcher instead of your custom one. Unsurprisingly, you’ll see complaints in the reviews section of pretty much every launcher available in the Play Store.
Quite frankly, that kind of behavior is enough to keep most people away from custom launchers. Having to re-open your launcher when you want your phone to “just work” isn’t worth any kind of special feature that the launcher promises.
I Didn’t Start Buying Samsung Phones Until They Got Boring
This is the most excited I’ve ever been to buy Samsung phones.
Launchers aren’t the best experience anymore—just the most fun
Customization is still what makes Android cool
While the tide has undoubtedly shifted in favor of OEM Android UIs over the past few years, and you gain few practical advantages from installing a custom launcher, some users still opt to do so. The launchers that were once popular have largely fallen from grace, but a few newer names have taken the spotlight.
Microsoft Launcher has over 50 million downloads with an impressive 4.7-star rating, Niagara Launcher overhauls your phone into an ultra-minimalist list-based UI, and Smart Launcher is just a plain, solid alternative. So, if you’re feeling nostalgic about custom launchers after reading this piece, maybe it’s worth giving one of these a try—despite conventional wisdom suggesting you should stay away from them.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
