If you’re using Chris Lacy’s Action Launcher, there’s a pretty sizable updating waiting for. Version 1.20 brings a helpful search feature right there in the Action Bar. It’s able to search through your contacts, apps and even music, giving the results there there on the home screen. Action Launcher’s unique “Covers” — think folders with more functionality — have gotten even better and now serve as app shortcuts as well as a folder with more options inside. There also are options to hide apps from the app list, some visual changes, and you can import home screens from other third-party launchers.
We’ve got the entire changelog after the break (Lacy jokes that it’s too long to fit on a single Nexus 7 screen, which is saying something), and some demo video is ready to go there as well. The update should be live in Google Play any time now.
Action Launcher 1.2.0 changelog:
- NEW: Quicksearch – filter the apps, contacts and even music on your device, directly from the action bar’s search button.
- NEW: Covers can now be opened by swiping vertically on the cover icon, double-tapping the icon, or both. A swipe is the default.
- NEW: Added tutorial, detailing covers, the sliding app drawer and Quicksearch.
- NEW: Users can specify apps to hide from the app drawer.
- NEW: Vastly improved the animation when opening the app drawer.
- NEW: Allow configuration of the number of rows and columns on a homescreen page.
- NEW: Allow configuration of the number of columns on the dock.
- NEW: Added support for importing a layout from Apex, Nova and TouchWiz, in addition to stock Android.
- NEW: Added support for expanding and shrinking the padding on the edges of the screen.
- NEW: The double-tap time to open a cover can be changed via the settings.
- NEW: Added setting to disable automatically opening the notification panel after a downward swipe.
- NEW: Added ability to resize any widget.
- NEW: Display a dialog highlighting the new features of this release.
- CHANGE: Remove the “Apps” text from the action bar.
- CHANGE: Automatically close the app drawer when resuming the app.
- CHANGE: All buttons on the action bar are the same color.
- CHANGE: Never display the Customize button. Instead this button always resides in the overflow menu.
- CHANGE: Items in the sliding app drawer are the exact same height as the action bar.
- CHANGE: Revert to using standard AOSP behavior for homescreens. The default page is in the ‘middle’, rather than the far left.
- CHANGE: If there is a single homescreen, or the default homescreen is displaying, pressing Home opens the app drawer. Otherwise, jump to the default homescreen.
- CHANGE: Modifying the number of homescreens now uses a pretty NumberPicker.
- BUG FIX: Vastly improved the performance when scrolling through homescreens.
- BUG FIX: When rearranging items in a cover, the cover image updates correctly on the homescreen.
- BUG FIX: Change wallpaper apps load correctly
- BUG FIX: Swiping from the very edge of the screen will change a homescreen on all devices.
- BUG FIX: The Direct Dial widget works correctly on Samsung devices.
- BUG FIX: Fix action bar going MIA at times.
- BUG FIX: Shortcuts to just installed apps are displayed on the default home screen.
- BUG FIX: Width of the app drawer displays correctly on 10″ tablets.
- BUG FIX: The app drawer no longer incorrectly opens when dragging an item on a homescreen.
- BUG FIX: The ‘Page indicator’ setting no longer has a mistaken dependency on the ‘Dock seperator’ setting.
- BUG FIX: Clicking a hardware home button when a device is powered off and there is no lockscreen no longer mistakenly opens the app drawer.
- BUG FIX: Adjust default page margins so that TouchWiz widgets display correctly.
- BUG FIX: Widget previews no longer display indefinitely on ICS.
- BUG FIX: Shortuct widgets can be created on ICS.
- BUG FIX: Fix FC when moving widgets on ICS.
- BUG FIX: Fix FC when duplicate shortcut IDs are used.
- BUG FIX: Fix FC when importing a layout with no items in it.