this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025

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Introducing Octopi Launcher - Now in Open Beta! (play.google.com)

submitted 6 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi folks,

After numerous feedback and hundreds of changes, I'm happy to share that my project, Octopi Launcher, is ready for open testing.

Below are some key features, with more to come:

Foldables support - have totally different layouts on each screen
(Auto scrolling) widget stacks
Float/ pin a widget on top of home screens
Display drawer icons as tiles
App drawer folders and favorite apps
Assign a nickname to an app (e.g. searching "ff" can instantly launch Firefox)
Launch different apps using swipes on an icon
Icon pack and shortcut support
Resize individual home screen icons
Index bar and reachability mode for drawer
Option to hide status and navigation bars
Notification badges
Private space support
Lock home screen layout
Haptic effects

Shane has also done a video review on a slightly older version, which gives an idea what this launcher can do.

Have a great day!

top 6 comments

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Coming from Nova, this looks like a launcher bringing some of the same intuitive navigation and handling that make me consider switching.

Props on (nearly) side to side widget sizing.
private spaces support stands out
Swipe actions are nice to see too

Drawer style needs some getting used to, missing quickly accessible categories (tabs) but I might come to an arrangement with folders on top.

Home screen gestures feel limited with up and right but no down, double finger swipe or twist. Swipe right from first screen (=left most, could be communicated better I think) feels odd, especially in a configuration with screens on both sides of home it loses some of the quick access utility.

Swipe actions per screen apparently means physical one although I can't confirm that with a traditional brick. I was hoping it would be per page to offset the point above.

Swipe actions on app icons on home, but not on folders seems odd to me. ~~Missing folder behavior like tap to launch first, swipe (up|down) to (open|shortcut)~~ Found it in settings but seems to be global instead of per folder?

App drawer search feels a bit clunky, button on the lower right is hard to reach, start search always shows and costs screen space. Swipe down to search while in the drawer was a nice touch in Nova I miss here. Edit: home screen gesture swipe opens app search so that's an option I'm using for now even tho it costs an additional home gesture slot.

Edit: having both show search and easy reach active seems really silly since the keyboard overlaps 80% immediately.
Drawer scaling could do with a preview or be available alongside the column and display style menu.

Drawer a-z list scrolling feels gooood, with the haptic feedback and quick preview. Nice work!
Got a bug tho: if a letter only has a single app and it ends up on the right column in a 2 column list layout the drawer scrolls to far and it ends up above the viewport.

Widgets stacks are neat but not sure of a good use case yet since I mostly want my widget contents to be available at a glance. Autoscroll is cool but a bit busy. Might get back to that at some point tho.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 hours ago

I thought this had something to do with the 3D printing software called Octopi.. Was really confused.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The biggest thing that stops me from switching to a new launcher is the support for search engines.

Most launchers artificially limit your options for search engines to the top 4-5 options. Mostly Google, bing, DDG, and some foreign language options.

Does Octopi Launcher allow you to add your own custom search option for people who use other engines like Kagi or SearXNG?

Being able to add a custom search engine is genuinely a killer feature for me and should be included in all launchers but is lacking from almost all of the ones I've tried.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

There's a standard way to describe search engines, including the correct URL to use to perform searches, in a machine readable way (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/Guides/OpenSearch), so I'm surprised that I haven't seen any launchers that use that metadata. It's how web browsers detect search engines. A launcher could let you type the domain/URL for your search engine and pull the OpenSource XML to configure it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 hours ago

Is there a non-Google option?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

Just installed it, I like it so far. Nice work