Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
Finally got annoyed enough with google at a glance and it’s inaccurate weather that I downloaded Nova launcher so I could banish the widget. I hadn’t bothered before because the latest Android versions had most of the same functionality
I’m a weirdo and so I use a launcher called KISS. There are different options but how I have it set up, it’s mostly a clear screen except a search bar at the bottom with some favourites pinned above it. Then if you tap the search bar, it fills the screen with a list of the most commonly used apps. Or you can tap a button on the side of the search bar to see all apps, or start typing the app you want.
I also have gestures set up, so I swipe different directions on that blank home screen to open different apps.
I was previously using Pie Launcher, where there are no apps or widgets on your screen until you tap and hold and a circle of your pinned apps appear, then you swipe to the one you want to open. KISS was a bit less frustrating for others to use, but still a bit haha.
I love it though. For a long time I had the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day on my wallpaper, so having a clean home page meant I could see the picture really well.
Oh wow, I forgot about APOD!
I loved some of their colourised nebula images
Yeah lots of cool stuff. You can use Muzei and the Muzei APOD plugin to automatically change your background each day.
That sounds fun actually.
I just have some folders with frequently used stuff, and one whole screen devoted to a non crap weather widget (Weawow) a search widget, and Agenda Widget.
I use persistent notifications for a few things, and occasionally apps get promoted to the home screen temporary, for example when I go to the USA in September I’ll dig up the airnz app out of the app drawer.
Some of that’s general laziness but also at some point I just lost interest in customisation for the sake of customisation and I tend to only go looking for options when I’m annoyed with something or if the amount of slack I can gain from customising will outweigh the effort.
I had the same background picture for like 6 years. Got bored enough during lockdown that I changed it, but then had to redo my colour and icon scheme.
I had the same background picture on my phone for about the same amount of time, whenever I tried to change it, it didn’t feel like my phone anymore.
That phone still has the background picture, but I got a new one last Christmas and now that one has become the phone for playing podcasts for the kids (and occasionally Minecraft).