It has been a long road since V12, and I am really, really glad this milestone has finally been reached. There has been times where I wondered whether this would eventually happen.

A large credit goes to alpha and beta testers, this app is so large that I’m unable to test everything. Your help is invaluable.

Thanks !

Originally shared by Lightning Launcher

Lightning Launcher V14

After several months of work and alpha/beta testing, I am proud to announce Lightning Launcher V14!

This is a big step forward, with many improvements, great new features and a huge overhaul of the internal architecture.

Under the hood, the new architecture will deliver more performance and more stability. But before all, it is designed to offer strong foundations for future evolutions, because the mobile world is itself constantly evolving.

This is an invisible change, but some other new features are much more prominent:

• Lightning offers a new object type: plugins. Think at plugins like “lightweight widgets”. These are ready to use, custom components that you can add to your home screen. When adding a new item, swipe to the plugins tab and select a plugin to create one. Since plugins are based on scripts, they can do pretty great things, and plus, they can be customized. As the list of existing plugins grows, you can expect great stuff from them.

• Thanks to the new architecture, Lightning can now be used as a custom Live Wallpaper. You can put a desktop as your Android background, with all Lightning capabilities, including scrolling panels, scripts and full support for widgets. This feature is a paid one in order to support the app’s development.

• For users of Android 7.1, Lightning brings the App Shortcuts functionnality as a standard action, so that you can easily link it to your prefered gesture (long press, swipe, or anything else). To pin a shortcut, long press, then drag and drop it on the desktop.

• V14 also comes with various improvements, such as a faster app drawer startup. On the script side, the engine received a myriad of new features, allowing to write easier and better code, as well as allowing a deeper integration with the launcher, thanks to customizable popup menus for instance.

I hope you’ll like this new version. As always don’t hesitate to report bugs or suggest a feature.

Enjoy!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pierrox.lightning_launcher_extreme

Last beta with a few fixes. The next update will be the public release.

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/

Probably the last beta before the stable public release. This one is mostly a bug fixes update and there won’t be any new feature until the stable version.

There are also a couple of new script APIs to help in writing more structured, better and simpler code. But more on this later.

Should you have bugs, don’t hesitate to let me know about them!

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/

Edit: V14b5 with minor bug fixes

I am pleased to release one more test update to the upcoming V14 version.

It has been under development for a while, but I feel the public release is near.

And V14b4 packs great new features.

Firstly, it brings support for Android 7.1 App Shortcuts. To use it, just set the action “Show app shortcuts” to your prefered item event (for instance long tap or swipe up gesture). Once it is displayed, the shortcuts can be launched with a single tap, or dragged/dropped onto the desktop using a long tap. Please note: the launcher needs to be the default one for Android to allow the feature.

Secondly, and most importantly, Lightning is now a Live Wallpaper, in addition to being a launcher and a lock screen. How to use it? Setup a desktop as you wish, including images, scripts, panels and widgets. Change the system wallpaper, select Lightning, then your LWP desktop, and you’re done. The full LL flexibility is available, no limit nor constraint, you’re free to do whatever you wish. I recorded a basic demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlzUfHQDTmA.

I said there would be no constraint to this feature, but in fact there is one, because the Lightning LWP is a paid feature. I know this isn’t the most pleasant thing to hear, but remember that behind each new feature and update there’s someone to actually make it happen, and at some point this work has simply to be supported. The good news is that during the beta I am providing promo codes to unlock the feature for free: drop me an e-mail, I have at least 100 codes to give away, hurry up!

As usual, this version also includes various other improvements and bug fixes, please check the change log for all details.

Enjoy!

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/

What’s new?

The most visible change is the support for “plugins”: it consists in allowing the user to click on “Add item” and select either a built-in object, or a plugin loaded from an APK. You can try it with the sample clock APK (download it here : http://www.lightninglauncher.com/scripting/samples/Clock-2.1.apk) and watch the video to see how it works.

In fact the feature is currently pretty basic. At the moment, it is mostly the same as loading a script from a package, except that the APK is shown in the “Add item” dialog. More documentation and sample source code can be found here: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/scripting/.

This sample clock plugin also demonstrates new features found in V14b3:

– support for customizing the item popup menu, meaning that you can now remove, or add items to create your own menu content, through script. Pretty much everything can be done, from easily adding a new menu item, to fully replace the whole popup content. There’s one limitation though: this is available for items, not for the container menu. This official hook replaces the smart but fragile implementation based on ViewTreeObserver.

– support for using Lightning preference controls (the ones used in the app’s settings screen). This can be used to easily create preference screens.

Naturally, that version also comes with a few bug fixes, but not that much. Good!

But there’s something bigger to come… stay tuned!

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/

A few bug fixes are in this new version (the biggest one being template merging) and also an important addition to scripts: they can now be classified using a path.

Using a path for scripts has two goals:

– help in classifying its own scripts (for instance, tools, events, custom views, etc.)

– help in keeping scripts organized when using templates or importing scripts: by keeping all your scripts under a given path, it will prevent the list of scripts to endlessly grow and become unmanageable. I strongly recommend to use a reverse domain name like path (something like /net/pierrox/lightning_launcher).

Enjoy!

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/