Here are some new features in Pixel Launcher in Android 15.

Apps that enhance your phone’s home screen are called launchers. Thanks to Android’s customization features, there are many Android home screen launchers to choose from. Most people continue to use the default home screen launcher. For his Pixel smartphone from Google, this is called Pixel Launcher. Pixel Launcher may not be as customizable as Nova Launcher, but new features continue to be added with every Android release. The upcoming Android 15 update is no exception, with the new release gearing up to tweak several aspects of the app launch experience.

First, Google is preparing to tweak the animation that plays when you swipe up on an app to return to the home screen. The new animations are faster and more resilient, and the wallpaper zoom effect is more pronounced. This is a screen recording comparing the swipe to home animation in Android 14 and Android 15 Beta 1.

Next, Pixel Launcher is preparing to improve widget recommendations in Android 15. Currently, when you open the widget selector in Pixel Launcher, a seemingly random widget appears at the top of the page. There’s no clear explanation as to why Pixel Launcher recommends certain widgets, but thankfully the new recommendation system gives you more recommendations to choose from. Additionally, our recommendations are categorized by type, so you can easily find the widget that fits your home screen needs.

In my testing, I found three recommended categories: Essentials, Social, and Entertainment. However, a quick look at the Pixel Launcher’s code shows that there are five other categories available, including Health & Fitness, News & Magazines, Recommended for You, Your Chill Him Zone, and Weather. . Interestingly, some of the widgets from third-party apps were recommended to me. This suggests that Pixel Launcher may be taking some kind of algorithmic approach to recommendations, rather than simply using a hard-coded list.

Another widget-related improvement in Android 15 is the addition of a + Add button to the widget selector in Pixel Launcher. This button makes adding widgets to your home screen a little easier, as you don’t have to long press and drag them. Instead, just tap + Add and Pixel Launcher will automatically add the selected widget to an empty spot on your home screen.

Finally, Android 15’s Pixel Launcher is also preparing recent screen UI improvements. Modern screens are actually powered by a module within the system launcher app called QuickStep. The recent screen in Android 14 consists of a horizontal carousel of recently opened apps. That hasn’t changed with Android 15, but what has changed is how you access the menu, which has buttons to open the app information page, enter split-screen mode, and pause the app.

On Android 14, you can access this menu by long-pressing an app’s icon on the recent screen. This may not be obvious to some users, so they may miss these shortcuts entirely. Android 15 may fix this issue by adding a small pill near the top of each app on the recent screen. This pill contains the app’s icon, name, and a drop-down arrow that opens the aforementioned menu. We hope this change will make these buttons easier to find.

All changes to Pixel Launcher described in this article are not yet live in Android 15 Beta 1. I had to manually enable some flags to see the changes. Therefore, one or more of these changes may not be released in the stable version of Android 15 released later this year. However, these subtle changes improve the app launch experience, so I don’t see why they aren’t deployed. It’s unclear how many of these changes will be reflected in his AOSP’s standard launcher, as the Pixel Launcher is only on Google’s Pixel devices. So it remains to be seen whether these changes will also be applied to devices from other OEMs. Respective Android 15 update.