Hi folks,
After numerous feedback and hundreds of changes, I’m happy to share that my project, Octopi Launcher, is ready for open testing.
Below are some key features, with more to come:
- Foldables support - have totally different layouts on each screen
- (Auto scrolling) widget stacks
- Float/ pin a widget on top of home screens
- Display drawer icons as tiles
- App drawer folders and favorite apps
- Assign a nickname to an app (e.g. searching “ff” can instantly launch Firefox)
- Launch different apps using swipes on an icon
- Icon pack and shortcut support
- Resize individual home screen icons
- Index bar and reachability mode for drawer
- Option to hide status and navigation bars
- Notification badges
- Private space support
- Lock home screen layout
- Haptic effects
Shane has also done a video review on a slightly older version, which gives an idea what this launcher can do.
Have a great day!
The biggest thing that stops me from switching to a new launcher is the support for search engines.
Most launchers artificially limit your options for search engines to the top 4-5 options. Mostly Google, bing, DDG, and some foreign language options.
Does Octopi Launcher allow you to add your own custom search option for people who use other engines like Kagi or SearXNG?
Being able to add a custom search engine is genuinely a killer feature for me and should be included in all launchers but is lacking from almost all of the ones I’ve tried.
There’s a standard way to describe search engines, including the correct URL to use to perform searches, in a machine readable way (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/Guides/OpenSearch), so I’m surprised that I haven’t seen any launchers that use that metadata. It’s how web browsers detect search engines. A launcher could let you type the domain/URL for your search engine and pull the OpenSource XML to configure it.