[Android Apps and Games] Nx Biotic:
Sapphyx Launcher users are now privileged to see what i have been working on these past few weeks on Sapphyx Launcher by accepting the beta update now available for Thanksgiving.

I have spent hours, days, weeks even looking through the feedback and reviews on Google Play. I understand i cant get back the users who passed down Sapphyx but I can take into consideration their review and feedback.

In this update, Ive introduced the following changes.

-Sapphyx Launcher API has been deprecated for Context Home. Context Homescreen is a vertical viewpager extended homescreen with 3 pages. 1st page is not finished but will be a quick app drawer, second page will be a dashboard of cards and services that will help any android user and a dashclock powered page that will show modules with the help of the Dashclock widget.

-Bottom Launcher menu has been deprecated for a side menu thats powered by Transitional Themeing and is smoother and faster.

-Transitional Themeing is a new theme engine ive been working on since Sapphire Launcher that never made its way into the launcher until now. T Theming pulls the dominant color and text reading color from your wallpaper and applies it to views that it sees necessarily to theme. This option can be triggered in the launcher settings to work its magic on folders and the app drawer.

-The QSB area at the top of the launcher were we would normally see a date widget or weather information like Google has placed in the recent launcher3 builds can now be manually changed by a favorite widget of choice. Not all widgets are supported because of the small amount of space given but any widget with flexibility will work. My favorite is Another Widget =)

-The dock has been revisioned for a few reasons. Number one, we can now place a widget in the dock. This opens the flexibility of your launcher homescreen and brings new customization to the table. The dock had to be rewritten to allow such dark magic to work properly. The second reason it was rewritten is because i will be working to bring a second row to the dock. This will allow users to build a pixel 2 experience homescreen. I first will need to rebuild the IDs of the launcher and registry settings for the dock. This will come later.

-The app drawer has also been rewritten. From the Recent Apps provider to the new toolbar to the new theme engine being integrated, its pretty fascinating experience. I have not fixed the pull down gesture bug were experiencing yet but looking hard into it. Padding has been revised for both pull up drawer and the clickable version. Background colors no longer show a jitter affect when transitioning from the drawer to your homescreen. This was fixed with custom frame layouts applied to both the dock and drawer to act as the themeable barrier. The app drawer was designed based on the concept of the Sense launcher having the ability to access menu items, a hidden searchview and themeable assets. The searchbar can be hidden to create a slimmer drawer for your device.

-Folders have been slightly patched for padding, style and for the theme engine.

-Analytics has been revised to show me what users access the most so i can concentrate on more of what the community wants.

-The widget container has been slightly modified for a better appearance.

-Rotation should be working properly now.

And finally

-The Launcher settings has been completely rebuilt from the ground up to offer a very unique experience for navigation and less confusing being more compact. Completely based on a material experience, the main interface is powered by Google's bottom navigation while the launcher customization is powered by a view pager. The settings registry has been slightly revamped to be faster, smarter, catch and report errors and apply the customization more smoothly on Oreo and devices with Qualcomm chipsets. Updates from google play can be detected more easily and will appear as a nice little badge indicator in your toolbar while your google profile gives it a personal feel and experience. Users who do not have a license to Sapphyx have a less intrusive experience has alerts and dialogs have been towned down and I am looking to give you more. Transitional Themeing is a free feature!

As alpha and beta features...

-Notification Bubbles have come into play to Sapphyx Launcher. These little bubbles appear as pending notifications and pull the dominant colors from your wallpaper to fit in nicely. This is currently a beta feature and has been built from scratch as my own implementation of Dots from android oreo launcher.

-Pre-Naugat shortcuts have started to make their way in the launcher as an Alpha feature. Now, I do not think they are currently working properly but they dont crash the launcher so its a good bad scenario. I will be using this power to implement a new menu system in the launcher. These shortcuts only build static shortcuts which are provided to apps in the manifest and not code.

Have fun and remember to provide back feedback to me and Del on the Google Plus Community Group. Happy Holidays!