Paranoid Android was enamored with Facebook Home when it came out. We all were, really, but the thought of Facebook in our face all the time was a bit much. Chatheads was a particularly cool concept, but just not as finished or nice as we would have hoped. Paranoid Android fixed that for us.

Their Halo theme is one we’ve been excited for, and have kept track of throughout. There is a lot of cool stuff about Paranoid Android ROMs, but Halo brings the Chathead feature to us on a wider scale. Rather than being focussed on Facebook Messenger, as Home was, Halo brings those cool little pop-ups to just about every app you have.

While in other apps, you will still get pop-ups for others. We currently get that with the notification bar, but Halo saves the trouble of having to pull down the top-bar menu to respond. Halo has been in alpha testing for some time, but is now ready for public beta testing.

Paranoid Android notes they re-wrote much of the code for Halo beta, as the alpha testing evidently showed them enough issues to warrant doing so. We’re happy they didn’t scrap the idea, as it’s the most exciting ROM we’ve seen in some time.

Keep in mind, like anything beta, it will have some quirks and issues. That’s what beta is all about, though, right? Testing and reporting, driving the whole program forward. If you’re interested in being involved, give it a whirl! If you want to know what it looks like first-hand, check out the video below.