Microsoft Launcher

Microsoft Corporation

About this app

Microsoft Launcher provides a new home screen experience that empowers you to be more productive on your Android device. Microsoft Launcher is highly customisable, allowing you to organise everything on your phone. Your personalised feed makes it easy to view your calendar, to do lists, and more. Sticky Notes on the go. When you set up Microsoft Launcher as your new home screen, you can either start fresh with your favourite apps or import your current home screen layout. Need to switch back to your previous home screen? You can do that, too!

This version of Microsoft Launcher has been rebuilt on a new codebase to make new features possible, including dark mode, personalised news, and numerous performance improvements (improved load time, less memory use, better battery performance, and fluent animation).

MICROSOFT LAUNCHER FEATURES

Personalised news:
· Stay informed with a personalised news reading experience that is consistent across all your devices.

Customisable icons:
· Give your phone a consistent look and feel with custom icon packs and adaptive icons.

Beautiful wallpapers:
· Enjoy a fresh new image from Bing every day or choose your own photos.

Dark theme:
· Comfortably use your phone at night or in low light environments with Microsoft Launcher’s new dark theme. This feature is compatible with Android’s dark mode settings.

Improved performance:
· Microsoft Launcher now loads faster, uses less memory, is more battery efficient, and offers fluent animations.

Landscape mode:
· Microsoft Launcher supports vertical and horizontal orientations to enhance your viewing preference.

Microsoft Launcher asks for the following optional permissions:

· Microphone: Used for speech-to-text functionality for Launcher features, such as Bing Search, Bing Chat, To Do, and Sticky Notes.

· Photo and video: Used for getting features, such as your wallpaper, Blur Effect, and Bing Chat Visual Search, and to show recent activities and backups. On Android 13 and higher, these permissions are replaced with the ‘All file’ access permissions.

· Notifications: Needed to notify you of any update or app activity.

· Contacts: Used for searching contacts on Bing Search.

· Location: Used for the Weather widget.

· Phone: Allows you to call your contacts with a swipe in Launcher.

· Camera: Used to create image notes for the Sticky Notes card and to search for images in Bing Search.

· Calendar: Used to show calendar info for the Calendar card in your Launcher feed.

You can still use Microsoft Launcher even if you do not consent to these permissions, but some functions may be restricted.

TERM OF USE
By installing this app, you agree to the Terms of Use (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=246338) and Privacy Policy (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=248686).

Downloading Microsoft Launcher gives the option to replace the default launcher or to toggle between device launchers. Microsoft Launcher does not replicate the user’s PC home screen on the Android phone. Users must still purchase and/or download any new apps from Google Play. Requires Android 7.0+.

Ratings and reviews

I love it, but it doesn't work well on Pixel 7. As others comment, the screen freezes and it is very hard to recover the navigation, you need to go to the configuration and switch to the original launcher, then switch back to MS launcher and after that it fixes (for a while). Apply a patch for Android 14 please 🙏

Been using this launcher for 6 years and I love it! But lately there's an issue: the images I pick to set as wallpaper are HD and when I set them the quality drops dramatically, it's a bit annoying since sometimes it'd even look blurry. I've tried changing the resolution of the picture, adjusting settings on my device and the launcher but nothing seems to work, hope you can fix it

I've been using this launcher for years. I love this launcher. But it decided to delete the entire home screen. With no way to restore it outside of an outdated backup. I hope Microsoft considers adding an auto backup feature so when something like thos happens. Not all is lost. Update: It happened again. Except this time it was just a folder. And it won't restore from a backup. No matter how far back I go to my backup. That folder refuses to show up.

What's new

Known bugs were fixed and performance improvements were made.