This was a fun project for my Galaxy S10. As a (primarily) iPhone user who uses an old Android phone as a music archive and, because Android is still cool… when I heard that someone was making a launcher based around the concept of macOS/iOS Spotlight (Apple’s universal search tech), I was interested. Plus, I like the minimal look of the launcher. I’m an old Nova Prime user, so that’s what was installed, but I thought it was time to change it up. My iPhone can really only display icons, so I wanted my Android phone to look different.

The article is worth a read, but it leaves out some caveats. Firstly, the launcher only supports the weather in Germany. If you’re not in Germany, it won’t work. The article doesn’t even mention this. (Maybe the article writer is also in Germany.)

Second, the Kvaesitso launcher is not available on Google Play. I’m ashamed to admit I did not have F-Droid installed. I always had it before. So that was an easy install. Then I was able to install the launcher. Not strictly necessary, but it provides an easy update service (assuming the launcher can’t update itself). As a part-time Android user who’s been in the game for 16 years but out of it most of the last 10, I floundered a bit getting Firefox and F-Droid permission to install apps (the former permission to install the latter). But it’s pretty easy, and you can search the settings when the apps don’t just link right to them.

To get weather outside of Germany, you have to install another app called Breezy Weather. This can be installed from F-Droid, but it also has its own repository which gets the updates faster, so I added that to F-Droid and added it. Bonus: Breezy Weather is quite nice, and it’s FOSS! I really like the iOS weather app, especially the animations, but the information is clean and clear. Breezy checks those boxes. Based on what I’ve seen, I give it my recommendation.

Fourth, Kvaesitso doesn’t just index your apps. You do have to teach it how you want to use it. But, if you use Android full-time, this should come naturally. Oddly and counter-intuitive to both iOS and Android users, you don’t swipe UP to get the app drawer, you swipe DOWN. Swiping up gets you widgets, so leaving that (you can change it) means your muscle memory is bringing you media controls, weather, notes, and favourite apps instead of a big dumb grid. You can still get the big dumb grid, and so far, I don’t see a way to hide apps I don’t care about. So that’s one of Android’s big weak points, duplicate/worthless apps you can’t always hide. (iOS actually had it worse for a while, until we got the App Library and the ability to not have apps on the Home Screen.)

But at the end of the day, with some tweaking, I now have an Android phone that acts differently from most other Android phones, and also acts/looks nothing like my iPhone. It’s nice to have both to have access to both ecosystems… or to have access to a keyboard that doesn’t straight up hallucinate bullshit, like the iOS keyboard has done for years. (I still love Gboard. Sad it sucks so much on iOS. It’s still a dream to use on Android.)

As an iPhone user, I think the biggest thing about Android we commonly hear is that it’s janky. It doesn’t move consistently from apps to the launcher and to the system UI. I don’t think Android users really notice this until they try an iPhone for a year or two and then try to go back. In fact, doing things like adjusting the animation scale in dev settings is considered a power move (personally, I disable them). But, as a decade-long iPhone guy, I absolutely do notice it, especially having a 7-year-old Android phone. (Or rather, tablet. It’s a phone but it has no SIM card or eSIM. So, tablet. At 5.8".) However, something about Kvaesitso makes it feel more right. After I set it up, I found myself using my Android phone for a couple hours while the iPhone sat on the desk. I also lost about 45% of my battery doing all that. If I want to keep this thing much longer, I should look into a battery swap, but if I can find a newer phone with microSD support, that might be the better buy. But, there’s a point here: all this worked on the Galaxy S10, which hasn’t seen a system update in a few years. If you’re subbed to this comm and reading this, your Android is probably newer than mine, and all this works on mine. So it should work on yours.

Not sponsored in any way, I read about it on Android Police and enjoyed the journey, figured others might benefit as well.