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Apex Launcher for Android

By Android Does Free Editors' Rating

Editors' Review

Download.com Staff Mar 17, 2014

Apex Launcher offers a lot of options for a free Android launcher, plus some unique touches like individually scrolling docks. It has cool effects like infinite and elastic scrolling, home screen gestures, and fancy transitions; customizable themes, labels, and icons; backup; and much more. It's optimized for both phones and tablets running Android 4.0.3 and up. If you have a phone and a tablet, Apex Launcher lets you configure a similar home screen experience for both. A Pro upgrade adds more themes, gestures, and drawer customization options.

The most obvious difference between Apex Launcher and our previous launcher was Apex Launcher's slightly different layout, with a Google search bar and a pair of separately scrolling docks displaying, among other apps, the Apex Menu and Apex Settings. The menu entries give a feel for this app's capabilities, including Wallpaper, Themes, Manage screens, and Help, the latter in the form of Web-based FAQs. We opened the Apex Settings, but before we started customizing, we tapped the red-flagged Previous Launcher to clear data from previous launchers from our device's memory. The free app doesn't pack as many themes as the paid version, which is fine because we wanted to use our own images. But to give a taste of Apex Launcher's customizability, we could set more than two dozen drawer options alone, everything from icon size and number to animation, scrolling, and behavior.

Apex Launcher's free app has more options than our phone's native launcher and more than some paid launchers we've seen, too. It belongs on any shortlist of Android docks, launchers, and screen enhancements.

Full Specifications

What's new in version

  • Merged changes from Android 4.2.2
  • Improved theme support
  • Bug fixes
  • Updated translations
  • General

    Release April 18, 2013
    Date Added April 18, 2013

    Operating Systems

    Operating Systems Android
    Additional Requirements REQUIRES ANDROID: 4.0.3 and up

    Popularity

    Total Downloads 2,911
    Downloads Last Week 0
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    Developer's Description

    Apex Launcher helps you create a customized homescreen experience on your Android (4.0+) device.

    Features:

  • Customizable homescreen grid size and up to 9 homescreens
  • Scrollable dock with up to 7 icons per page and up to 5 pages
  • Infinite & elastic scrolling (homescreen, drawer and dock)
  • Fancy transition effects (tablet, cube, etc.)
  • Hide elements as you want (persistent search bar, status bar, or even the dock)
  • Customizable icons and labels for shortcuts and folders
  • Choose different folder preview styles and background
  • Multiple drawer styles (transparent/opaque, horizontal/vertical, paginated/continuous)
  • Drawer apps sorting (title, install date, mostly used)
  • Hide apps from the drawer
  • Lock your desktop to prevent accidental changes
  • Enjoy homescreen gestures (pinch, swipe up/down, double tap)
  • Advanced theme engine (icon packs, skins, etc.)
  • Backup/restore settings and data
  • Optimized for both phones and tablets
  • Lots of other customization options!

    Apex Launcher Pro (Paid Version) Features:

  • Multiple configurable drawer tabs
  • Unread count notifications
  • Dock swipe gestures
  • Two finger gestures
  • More transition effects
  • ADW, LauncherPro, and Go Launcher theme support
  • Batch add option for folders
  • Option to merge folder contents
  • Widgets in dock (1x1 only)
  • Overlapping widgets
  • More features on the way!
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