Oct 31, 2021
YASAN Launcher: 21.11 Update
YASAN Launcher 21.11 is here and I cannot wait to tell you more about all the new changes!
Buttons Box Icon Style
Now you can choose between 5 different icon styles for icons shown on Home. This only affects Buttons Box and the rest of the app use the filled style.
App Options Sheet
The app options dialog is now converted into a bottom sheet. This is done because:
- Bottom sheets look & feel much better in general.
- Bottom sheets can scroll vertically indefinitely which can be used for upcoming features to manage apps easier.
Other than the form factor change, there is a new “Uninstall” button added to help you uninstall apps easier.
All other dialogs (pop-ups) are going to be converted to bottom sheets in future updates as well.
Crossfade
There is a new Crossfade option for app icons on the Look & Feel option screen. If enabled, app icons load with crossfade animation/transition.
Unfortunately, the crossfade feature is bugged in coil-compose which is the library YASAN launcher uses for loading images. This bug can cause the animation to stop prematurely which makes the icon look not fully opaque.
If you experience this bug, you can disable Crossfade until this issue gets fixed.
Clearer Option Screens
The more options we offer to users to make their home screen feel like home the harder it gets to make those options easily usable. Many of the option screens have been adjusted to be easier to understand. This includes many adjusted UI elements & wordings.
These changes include tens of small changes which I will not list here but if you are interested you can read about every single small change on the unstable release channel’s changelog.
Spacers Between Segments
Segment titles now show a spacer on top to create an empty space between segments making more complicated option screens easier to understand. This spacer is disabled only when the segment title is the first item on the screen.
More App Icon Size Previews
Now you can preview your icon size setting in more places than before.
Changelog Screen
You can now read the full changelog for both release channels on the new Changelog screen.
Currently, the changelog is an unformatted Markdown file. Proper formatting is going to be added to it as soon as possible to make the changelog easier to read.
The header for each release channel has 3 different states depending on if you have the app installed & if you are using it currently. If the version of the launcher is running you can see the version name and if you don't have it installed at all you can easily install it using the GET button.
Unstable Release Channel Rename
The unstable/developer version of the launcher used to be called YASAN Launcher NEXT which could be confusing for some users. So it is now renamed to YASAN Launcher DEV.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
There are many major bug fixes and performance improvements on this release including the items below:
Major App Icon Optimizations
App icons now load much faster and use less memory at the same time! Also, app icons now show a placeholder while they are being loaded.
As a side effect, this change also fixes the annoying “Loading Apps” indicator when opening the launcher which could be pretty annoying as it would sometimes take too long to finish. The indicator still does show up but takes much less time now.
Memory Leak Fixes
There were a few potential memory leaks on the previous versions which are now fixed. This should make your whole phone experience much smoother.
Miscellaneous Bug Fixes
- Fixed the bug where the New/Edit folder screen would show each event message multiple times.
- Fixed the bug where the New/Edit folder screen would navigate the user multiple destinations back instead of navigating them to the previous destination.
- Fixed Dashboard Greeting’s weekday text not fully following the device’s default locale.
- Fixed the bug where app icon size previews did not match actual icon size.
- Fix “Layout” segment title disappearing if icons are disabled on the Drawer Option screen.
- Fixed Pride option screen having an invalid title.
Miscellaneous Changes
- The default Home colors have been adjusted and are now more transparent.
- Folder apps are no longer excluded from Drawer by default.
- App icon paddings are adjusted.
- Build time text on the About screen now has better formatting for better readability.
- Compose (UI Toolkit) updated to v1.0.4 from v1.0.2.
Widget Support Coming Soon
This release was originally planned to bring Widget support to the launcher but unfortunately, I did not find enough time to polish it enough for this release.
Due to the unique style of YASAN Launcher, I am still not sure what is the best way of handling widgets. Some similar launchers only give the user one widget container but one widget container is probably not enough for most users.
My goal is to support unlimited widgets on Dashboard & a single widget on Home. Widget support is very likely to be present on the upcoming 21.12 release.
Final Words
YASAN Launcher 21.11 is now available to download on the Google Play store but you might take a day or two to show up on your updates screen.
Thank you for reading,
YASAN
Get YASAN Launcher:
- YASAN Launcher on Play Store (Stable version — Recommended)
- YASAN Launcher DEV on Play Store (Unstable version)
