Nothing Launcher (Beta) is Now Available

Nothing announced today that a pre-release version of its Android launcher is now available to download from the Google Play Store.

“Nothing Launcher (Beta) is a beta preview of Nothing OS,” the app’s description notes. “Experience Android combined with our iconic design language. Unique features include Max Icons and Max Folders, as well as bespoke Weather and Clock widgets.”

The Nothing Launcher (Beta) is now available for Samsung S21 and S22 series, and Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 6 series. It is coming to OnePlus soon, Nothing says.

And since I have a Pixel 6 Pro, I decided to give it a shot, despite my misgivings about this company and what it’s trying to do. (Call it misplaced OnePlus nostalgia.)

I’m not sure what to say: there’s no app icon, so you need to go into Settings to switch to this launcher, and when it runs, it’s just a very minimalist design. Almost what you would expect of “pure” Android but don’t actually get with Pixel.

What I’m not a fan of is Nothing’s weird dot-matrix font/branding, which appears on only some Settings pages (like Home settings and Wallpaper & Style, but not Widgets). It just looks bad and worse, it looks tacked-on.

Beyond that, there’s no access to the Google Discovery feed to the left of Home, which I like to have. And most key UI elements—like the Notification shade and the All Apps screen—appear untouched.

I just installed it, so I don’t have any understanding of reliability yet, of course.