A new version of Action Launcher is rolling out today with a couple of cool new features, plus some new device-specific support. If you liked adaptive icons, you'll love adaptive folders. For those of you with the increasingly budget-friendly Essential Phone, you'll be happy to know the launcher works better with that device's unusual display. Want more? Well, there is more.

Here's the full changelog.

  • NEW: Full support for Android 8.0's shortcut and widget pinning from external apps, allowing for, as an example, Chrome to add a url shortcut to the Home screen. Please note that as per Android 8.0's changes, shortcuts and widgets will only be added when Action Launcher is the default system launcher.
  • NEW: Essential Phone support.
  • IMPROVEMENT: Update translations, including fixing order of items on At a Glance widget.
  • CHANGE: Animated clock app icon animates just the hour and minute hands. This both matches Pixel Launcher 2, as well as improving performance.
  • CHANGE: The "Icon style" setting has been depreciated. This functionality has been superseded by Adaptive Icon support, and also failed to work on Oreo. Customizing individual icon styles is still available on a per-app basis via Quickedit.
  • FIX: Fixed App Shortcuts not working on Android 7.1+ devices for apps that target old versions of Android (such as Textra and Telegram).
  • FIX: Fix certain shortcuts becoming invisible after picking them up and quickly putting them down again.
  • FIX: Fix appearance of items in All Apps drawer when App Shortcuts UI displays.
  • FIX: Fix height of status bar on devices such as Essential Phone and Pixel 2 XL.
  • FIX: Fix intermittent crash when rotating the device with the Quickdrawer open.
  • FIX: Fix issue where a Shutter's widget would sometimes not display correctly.
  • FIX: Fix Shutter reverting to its previous name upon app reboot after being renamed via the open Shutter panel.
  • FIX: Fix centering of cursor in All Apps drawer.
  • FIX: Fix centering of search box preview in Quickbar settings.
  • FIX: Fix crash when attempting to colorize Quickbar icons.
  • FIX: Fix appearance of menu button on Quickbar on Android 5.1 and earlier.
  • FIX: Fix issue where removing the last Cover/folder from a Home screen page would sometimes also fail to also remove the now empty Home screen.
  • FIX: Fix At a Glance widget preview displaying on update overview.
  • FIX: Fix single grey line appearing at the bottom of the settings page.

The Essential Phone was the first Android device with a notch missing from the screen. Thus, the way it renders apps can be weird. Essential stopped using the app whitelist to allow specific apps to draw in the status bar area, but that can still be buggy in certain apps. In v31, Action Launcher has dedicated support for the non-standard system bar height that should make it more reliable.

Adaptive icons were already supported in Action Launcher, but your folders were stuck in circle mode. That changes in v31. Now, you can set your folder shape to any of the standard adaptive formats including round, square, teardrop, and so on. Plus, adaptive icons are now a free feature in Action Launcher.

The new version is rolling out now in the Play Store. It's also live on APK Mirror.