Nova Launcher 4.0 brings grouped widgets, full Material Design, circular app animations and 25+ other changes

Nova’s Material Design update has been a long time coming for those who aren’t particularly crazy about beta testing, but the wait for it to hit the stable channel is finally over. Nova Launcher 4.0 is out on Google Play, and it stands to be one of the biggest updates yet for the premier home screen replacement.

The biggest changes will be a more refined Material Design user interface, including new animations, updated fonts, new material-themed wallpapers and other aesthetic-focused things. The full list is rather large, and rightfully so: this has been in the works for a few months now, with the last version — 3.3 — having been released as far back as December 2014.

Here’s a full list of changes you can expect if you haven’t been using the beta:

• Full Material Design


• Google Search from the search bar shows as an overlay


• Edit Shortcut dialog, and quick menu, tinted based on colors of the icon


• New icon


• New Nova Action icons


• Rebased on top of Launcher3


• Individual icon layout settings (size, font, etc) in Desktop, Drawer, Dock, Folder


• Max icon size boosted to 150%


• Widget Search


• Circular App animations (Settings > Look and Feel > App Animation > Circle)


• Pull to search (pull down in the drawer to open app or widget search)


• Widgets given their own drawer, removed from App Drawer


• Ability to change Page Indicator color


• Drawer Tab Bar completely optional


• Support for Android for Work managed profiles (Lollipop)


• Workaround Expand Notifications Nova Action not working on Samsung Lollipop


• Requires Android 4.1 or higher (Dropped support for Android 4.0 ICS)


• Unlimited desktop pages (previously limited to 9)


• Add/remove of desktop pages by dropping icons on the blank page, or removing all icons from a page


• Add blank desktop pages (for gestures or live wallpapers) from overview


• Improved bulk edit of folders (Folder > Menu > Select Apps)


• Added shadows to unread badges


• Unread Badge size scales with icon size


• Allow reordering drawer folders by drag/drop within window


• Added Roboto-Medium font option


• Improve handling of apps installed to sdcard

The download is sitting over at Google Play right here so be sure to grab it as soon as possible.

Android 5.1 for the HTC One M9 leaked, here’s a quick look at some of the changes

Lately, we’ve been seeing OEMs like Samsung make a big push to update their flagships devices to Android 5.1 — the latest version of Lollipop as it currently exists. Although we’ve yet to see the update from HTC, their recent track record leaves us optimistic.

If you’ve been curious to take a look at what HTC has been working on, Android developer and ROM modder LlabtooFeR is giving us a sneak peek inside an early Android 5.1 software build for the One M9 (2.7.401.1) and a few of the new changes therein.

We’re not sure where they got the idea from, but it looks like HTC will be giving users the ability to tweak the color temperature of their phone’s display. It’s something you’d typically only find on a TV or monitor, but a nice power user tweak that we think many users will appreciate. Also making its way to the One M9 as a part of Android 5.1 is multi-user support which you can find in the screenshots above. Smaller tweaks include new UI animations and improved sound controls that allow the user to enable Do Not Disturb mode but still allow alarms through.

Unless you have a carrier branded HTC One M9 in the US, we don’t think you’ll have to wait much longer before the update starts rolling out. In the meantime, you can either wait for the update to hit your HTC One M9 in the coming weeks/months or root your phone and flash LlabtooFeR’s latest ROM right now from the link down below.

[LlabtooFeR | via AndroidBeat]