One of the most powerful features of Android is the ability to have a custom homescreen launcher. Don’t like your stock launcher’s appearance? Not comfortable rooting your device? Do you want to root your device and add further customization? No problem, launchers are where it’s at.
Before I begin, I find it important to note that this app is in Closed Beta. You can download the app, but without the invite code, you cannot access it. Larva Labs Ltd does make it very easy to get this code by going to their Twitter account here.
I am making the disclaimer that Flow Home is in closed beta because it is obviously in its infancy and there are a few bugs plus a few other missing features. I will point out one in particular, but I have zero doubt that Larva Labs will have these things addressed by the time the app goes live.
Additionally, this app was written about a few days ago here at TalkAndroid by Jeff Causey, but I wanted to take a moment and give a full review from my personal experience with it.
In the headline, I claimed that this app is Windows 8 styled. What I mean by that is the interface is very similar to Microsoft’s handling of the homescreen: a vertical scroll that goes through your personal apps like text messages and emails, as well as your social media, and puts it front-and-center. Texts and emails, and other information that is of higher importance, take precedent and are placed at the top of the launcher’s feed.
Unlike Microsoft’s UI, these tiles are not “live” tiles. Meaning each and every tile links to a single location. For example, a tweet from TalkAndroid will show up as a tile that allows you to click it, opening up a pop-up that gives a bit more information and a link that will open this app and direct you to that entry. Plus, our notification and navigation bars are still present.
Want to see newer tiles in your feed? This is accomplished by dragging the feed down to refresh it, similar to what we do in almost every other app that has feeds. Want to dismiss a tile? Swipe it to the right.
But what if you don’t have a tile and want to open up an app? Larva Labs has included a circular, floating button in the bottom-right that will open up your favorite app shortcuts. The style of this button is in keeping with Google’s Lollipop material design and animation. The shortcuts can be rearranged or you can drag-and-drop them off of the pie interface to get rid of them.
In addition to this, the user can swipe from the right, opening the app drawer.
Do you have too many apps? You can hold down the bottom-right button to engage an app search. This can be done from the homescreen or the app drawer.
Flow Home also allows a bit of customization to its theme and behavior. At the very top, you can click your profile picture. This will take you to the launcher’s settings where you can change the theme, change the feed behavior, and even customize your user and top banner picture.
During my time with the launcher, I absolutely loved its unique approach to our beloved Android homescreen. Similar to Aviate, it puts the user’s life in the spotlight. Unlike with Aviate, which for me seems to be more business oriented, Flow Home is more personal.
Some things that I missed was my Google+ feed. I contacted Matt Hall, co-founder at Larva Labs, who said that there is a problem with Google+’s API that doesn’t allow feeding similar to Twitter and Facebook. He did say that they were working on Google+ and claimed that Feedly, Reddit, custom icons and widgets were on the list to be implemented.
Perhaps in the meantime, the developers at Larva Labs could create a setup with Google+ similar to how Flipboard does?
Also, the themes seemed a little lacking. I enjoyed the double-column option, but they only had “light” available at the moment. Readers will know that I like darker themes, so hopefully we can see this in the future.
Another thing I would like to see is having the top banner be expandable. For example, when unlocking your device, you’re greeted by the nearly-full banner, then swiping up will reveal the entirety of the feed.
Finally, I ran into a small bug that required me to uninstall and reinstall Flow Home. When I swiped away all the tiles, the launcher would no longer load new tiles. Again, closed beta…
In closing, I see a very bright future for Flow Home Launcher. The folks over at Larva Labs definitely have a winner on their hands and I sincerely hope they stay focused and energized to quickly give this brilliant application to the masses of people looking for a great stock launcher replacement. My personal favorite launcher, Nova, better watch out!
See below for a screen recording from my Nexus 5 as I walk you through the launcher. Below that is a link to the Play Store for Flow Home.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Google Play Download Link
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