Luwall Studios

What's new in Hybrid Launcher

The changes you would notice, week by week, newest at the top.

Week of 5 October 2026

  • App icons can show how many notifications are waiting, or a dot, in a colour you pick.
  • Hide apps from the drawer, with Undo. Settings > App drawer > Hidden apps brings them back.
  • A new install starts almost empty: Hybrid Settings on home, and your phone, messages and browser apps in the dock.
  • Privacy policy and Terms in Settings open their pages, on the cover screen too.
  • A widget brought over from another launcher now sets up again with one tap on Tap to set up.
  • Links and Secure Folder shortcuts on home take your icon shape too.
  • Home no longer slows down after you come back from an app, and the drawer opens and closes more smoothly.
  • Folders no longer cut off the second line of a name in their bottom row.
  • Swipe marks in the App icon style sit on their icon's edge when the open phone is held upright.
  • Side handles and bottom zones can be set to None.

Week of 28 September 2026

  • Bring your home over from Nova, Lawnchair or Octopi: look it over, then tap Use this home.
  • Back up your layout and settings to a file from Settings > Backup.
  • Hold an empty spot to see every page: reorder, add or delete pages, and choose your home page. Its dot is a house, and Home takes you back to it.
  • The grid is a setting, from 4 to 7 columns and 4 to 12 rows.
  • Widgets can overlap icons and each other, in front or behind, and fade from 0 to 100 % with their text kept readable.
  • Arrows or a small app icon show what an icon's swipes open, and taps and swipes give a light tick. Apps inside a home folder get swipes of their own.
  • Web pages added from a browser land on home, and can go into folders.
  • Clear an app's name to show its icon without a label.
  • Hold an icon over a folder to open it, and drop the icon inside.
  • An app's own shortcuts head its hold menu: drag one to home or set it as a swipe.
  • 18 live wallpapers of a cabin and Swedish nature, with snow, rain, fog, stars, fireflies or northern lights in three levels.
  • Side handles: swipe in from the screen's edge, over any app, for Back, Home, Recents, an app or a shortcut - short, long or swipe-and-hold.
  • Quick tools: a side swipe opens a panel for brightness, volume, the flashlight and a screenshot, with Android's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth panels a tap away.
  • Bottom gestures: up to three zones along the bottom edge, each swipe set to an action.
  • Layouts: one home for every screen, or a home of its own for the open phone. The cover screen stays upright.
  • New apps can wait in the drawer instead of landing on home.
  • Settings and the drawer reopen where you left them, for three minutes.
  • Folded, home skips empty pages between full ones.
  • Swipe down on any sheet to close it. The hold menu no longer slips under the navigation bar.
  • A new app icon: the folded phone in front of the open one, in a night landscape.
  • Home no longer slows down while a live wallpaper runs.

Week of 21 September 2026

  • Drag icons, folders and widgets to move or swap them; hold at the edge to turn or add a page. Remove anything, with Undo.
  • Drag apps from the drawer onto home.
  • Make a folder by dropping one app on another, and rename or delete it from its menu, with Undo. The drawer has folders too.
  • Rename apps and folders.
  • Swipe up or down on an app or a folder to open an app you choose. A tap on a folder can open an app inside it.
  • Settings show what each one changes, as a moving picture. Double-tap empty home to lock the phone, or drag down for your notifications.
  • Search the drawer, which forgives typos. Put its field at the top, at the bottom, or turn it off.
  • Icon shape and size, and folder style, colour and transparency, for every folder or for one.
  • A dock under the grid: up to 7 apps a page, two pages.
  • The drawer reaches edge to edge, in a colour and transparency you choose.
  • Change the wallpaper from a long press on an empty spot.
  • A new hold menu: a bubble on the lifted icon, with App info and Remove on top.
  • Status bar icons turn dark or light to stand out on your wallpaper.
  • Icons shrink slightly under your finger.
  • Its name: Hybrid Launcher.
  • An app's icon no longer turns into the Android robot after the app updates.
  • Widgets no longer lose their bottom row after a fold.
  • The same app can sit on home and in folders as many times as you like.
  • Apps with blank or matching names show and sort as they should.

Week of 14 September 2026

  • Unfolded, home and the drawer show two of the folded screen's pages side by side, so folding moves nothing.
  • Folders on home.
  • Add widgets, then resize, fade, pad and layer them, or remove them with Undo.
  • Bigger icons and side margins. The drawer scrolls instead of paging, and slides in over home.
  • The Home key closes the drawer, folders and menus.
  • Short swipes on the drawer are no longer misread.
  • No more light band over the navigation bar.

Week of 7 September 2026

  • Hybrid Launcher runs as the home screen on the Galaxy Z Fold 8: every app on a 5 x 6 grid.
  • Home keeps your layout and your page through restarts and folds.
  • Swipe up for the app drawer, which follows your finger.
  • Icons are kept ready, so the drawer opens with them already drawn.

Want something changed? Write to studio [at] luwall [dot] com.

Everything it does: Hybrid Launcher

Updated 6 October 2026