Change your style and freshen up your phone with these screen replacement apps and launchers

Android aficionados love the ability to change up their home screens on a whim. Out of the box, users can install factory widgets to let them know the time and weather or change the mood with fresh wallpaper. If you want more customization features than check out the best android theme Apps. The options for the best screen replacement apps are vast, and grow when you tap that magical Play Store icon for the very first time.

While there are dozens of ways to change the look of your UI, launchers, widgets and specialized apps are an excellent way to go. The best app organizer apps all have several features in common although some will offer up 3D and other tech tricks while others boast thousands of themes and offer up features like swipe-based gestures.

Needless to say, screen replacement apps are plentiful, but we have made things simple by compiling a list of the best ones currently available to download.

The best android launcher apps to manage your home screen:

Some developers on our list make more than just launchers, but that is not the case for TeslaCoil Software. Their focus lies with the Nova Launcher which is certainly one of the best launcher apps around. It is a full home screen replacement, meaning you will receive a complete makeover from the home screen and transitions all the way down to the icons.

All of the best screen replacement apps work in the same fashion, but some have better tricks than others. For Nova, some of the standouts include color controls for your folders, tabs, and backdrops along with a widget dock. It is snappy and has a clean layout that is sans any bloat or unwanted flair. You will also get something called subgrid positioning which allows you to “snap” an icon or widget in the middle of a grid cell. That is what we refer to as fine-tuning…

Those are all features you will receive in the free version of Nova, but Nova Launcher Prime brings a few new things to the table. Gestures, icon swipes, and custom drawer groups are all mentioned along with unread count badges through a plug-in. Nova Launcher Prime is priced at $4.99 if you like what you see with the free version.

Apex has been a fan favorite for a long time and consistently finds itself on many “best of” lists each year. That’s because it’s awesome and full of features that allow you to tailor your home screen to suit your needs. Does your usual home screen feel like it is cluttered? Well, you can have up to 9 of them with the Apex launcher, and you will get a scrollable dock with up to 7 icons per page as well. That is just the tip of the iceberg, my friends…

One of our favorite features has something to do with those boring drawers. Thanks to Apex, they aren’t nearly as bland as you can choose from several different styles including opaque. Do you want to customize your icons, hide apps or change the way your pages transition? It can handle that as well without breaking a sweat. You can even do away with the search bar or notification bar if you choose.

Like the rest of the launcher on our list, Apex comes with a free and paid version which is priced at $3.99. There are more than enough features in the free version to give you an idea of what to expect, while Apex Launcher Pro allows for more customization and even lets you import themes from other launchers.

Hola is one of the best screen replacement apps around and offers up more features than most in several key areas. Whether you actually want or need those features is a debate for another day, but you will get a battery saver, power manager, and app/game “Boost” with this particular launcher. Those are features we see commonly built into Anti-virus apps, task managers, and file managers, but you will find them with this launcher as well.

As for the actual features that allow you to customize your home screen, all the usual features are present with widgets, wallpapers and the like. There is an Omni Swipe tool that lets you switch between apps without heading back to the home screen and thousands of free themes that can be accessed through the app as well. This lightweight launcher is free to download but ad-supported.

Evie is one of the newer launchers in the market, and also one of the easier ones to deal with when it comes to settings. Some launchers can overwork your brain with the endless amount of tweaks, which means finding the right toggle can be difficult at times. This can turn users off before they even get going. That is not the case with Evie as you will quickly see when you first fire up the app.

Evie Launcher has a universal search function with lets you search within your apps, contacts and more. If you find something you want to make a shortcut to during a search, you can long-press it to make an icon on your home screen. Customization is an obvious perk, and this launcher lets you backup and restores your screen, change up icons on a whim and alter the structure of your home screens to suit your needs. Evie is simple to use and free to download on Google Play.

If you want a great launcher that keeps things simple but remains effective, you will be hard-pressed to find something slicker than the Arrow Launcher from Microsoft. This one hails from their “Garage” project and is built to be light, fast and take up fewer system resources than other launchers in its class. It also brings the stylings of a Windows-based handset to your droid.

As this one comes from Microsoft, Bing is built-in and can do more than offer up simple searches. It will bring new wallpapers to your handset on a daily basis along with a few other tech tricks. Other features of interest include a backup settings feature and a Utility page that lets you pin important cards for ease of access. While not as feature-packed as some of the apps on our list, it is a great choice if you want something simple and it is totally free to download.

Before Material Design became a big thing, 3D launchers were starting to shake things up on home screens across the globe. Now most UI’s take the flat approach, but there are still plenty of 3D launchers available that consumers can enjoy. The TSF Launcher 3D Shell is one of our personal favorites, and it may be the last launcher you download once you see what it can do.

Do you like funky transitions and widgets that are a little more active than most? If so, TSF has you covered with a wide variety of interactive icons, 3D widgets and other bits of flair baked into the UI. The app supports more than 10 independent home screen layouts and has something called an Unlimited dock bar as well. This feature allows you to adjust the actual dock position along with the length and angle.

That is a degree of customization you rarely see. As for the widgets, there are over 10 3D widgets from TSF to enjoy including ones that can tell you the time, whether or play music. Gestures are also supported to a degree if you feel like swiping instead of tapping. TSF Launcher 3D Shell is free to download from Google Play.

As the name implies, the Next Launcher 3D Shell Lite is a dumbed-down version of the Pro edition. It will be missing a few bells & whistles, but will still wow you with its 3D transitions and effects. The basic features of the app include 3D widgets, transition effects, and slick live wallpapers. It lives up to its basic name but does give you a rough idea of what the Pro version offers.

Next Launcher 3D Pro offers up 8 different gesture controls, a “shining border” effect during transitions and a floating mode for your icons and widgets. An Icon editor, additional transitions and a theme mix mode were listed as well. While fancy, the Pro version is by far the most expensive launcher on our list at a whopping $16.99.

The go launcher is one of the most popular home screen apps with over a hundred million installations by users on the Google Play store alone. The app is popular for its simple to use interface plus the highly customizable themes that will simply blow your mind.

This app is probably overrated but there as to be a reason for all this massive number of people installing and using the app. More often than not, the simplest explanation is the best, and this app may be just what people it is the ultimate best android launcher and home screen replacement app.

The Action Launcher 3 app is an all-time favorite launcher for a majority of the users who have already owned it. What you will find unique about Action Launcher are the Quicktheme, Covers and Quick page features. The Quickpage, for instance, allows you access to your hidden home screen from several interfaces. On top of all this, the app is relatively easier to use than most other launcher apps. To crown it all, the action launcher 3 is known to remain stable and smooth after updates; which is all the more reason for you to have it.

Hola has a certain elegance about it, with a unique gesture control support in its arsenal the Hola Launcher is made to impress you in a matter of seconds once you discover its functionality and feature-rich, smart design. This app has a good number of themes and icon types to choose from. The unique thing about Hola Launcher is the hidden app drawer and the quick launch feature from where you can access the most frequently run apps, so you do not have to search for them from the grid every time.

Get this smart app for your smartphone so that you do not have to tell it to do the obvious anymore when you wake up in the morning, you need to see what the weather is going to be like and what meetings you have to attend. Aviate has such a genius coding that turns your entire into your artificial intelligent assistant. This app even gets you to work faster by giving you traffic updates, and if you are playing a song, it will tell you when the artist may be coming to a concert near you. How cool is that? And of course, the best part is that you can use it for free!

This is surely a smart choice when choosing a launcher app for your mid-range smartphone because it goes easy on the system resources and runs efficiently. Even if your device is brand new and working fast enough, sooner or later it will become slow. This is particularly true with the continued installation of low-quality applications that require too many system resources to do so many unwanted things in the background. This app keeps your phone running at optimum speed while providing you the same high-quality functionality of any other app on this list. You can choose from many themes and pass-protection of applications.

The launcher is a serious launcher app whose main reason is to get your device to resemble a windows phone or windows 8 PC. If you are that person who likes how the windows platform is themed, then this is the app to get for your phone. If not, then sorry because this one you may not like as it does not have much else to offer. That said the Launcher 8 is a solid app that will run smoothly and efficiently on your device and the best part is that it’s free.

This is a simple app that is built to replace your launcher effectively without strain on the system resources. Sure you could say it is a bit featureless but runs like the wind, and the few features like an unlimited number of the home screen are pretty authoritative. If you still have that archaic smartphone, then this is the app that is guaranteed to run on low memory and CPU speed.

The atom launcher is a tiny app packed with many useful features like an auto disappearing dock with a setting panel, widgets of its own and the support for packing icons along with other customizable features. This app is free to try out, but you will have to pay for the Pro version to access full functionality. Still, the free version is a great app to try out as a replacement for your native launcher. A unique thing about this app is the theme maker which means you do not have to rely on preset themes you can tune it to feel like your Smartphone to the last detail.

Final Verdict

When you purchase a new smartphone you better like the design as there’s little you can do to change It aside from a case. It’s a whole different story when it comes to your home screen, however, and our list of the launcher and the best screen replacement apps will freshen up your home screen in no time.

If our solutions are a little too wild for your tastes, you can still alter the look of your handset dramatically with live wallpapers, widgets and custom lock screens.

You probably already know about these apps if you have been using an android based smartphone for that matter. I guess if you think of your apps as a team then these particular apps are the team captains. They have the power to run or close other applications and organize them for you. Seeing as they are quite powerful, you might want to choose carefully the app that you install on your device as it will determine the overall efficiency of the system.

The above launchers are really beautiful, functional, and each one has its own unique advantages. So, these are the best launcher app you should download and try. Best of all – these launcher apps available for free on play store.