HelixLauncher is a third party program launcher for Google Android that gives you a handful of features you don’t get from the default Android launcher.
The most noticeable is an app dock that hangs out on the bottom of your home screens. You can place up to four apps in the dock, and they’ll show up no matter which home screen you’re on. You can flick left or right and while your home screen apps and widgets will change, the apps in your dock stay put — making your Android phone just a little more iPhone-like.
But HelixLauncher has a few other tricks up its sleeve, including:
• Support for up to 7 home screens — even on phones that normally only provide you with three or 5
• Option to enable screen rotation, letting you view your home screen in landscape mode
• Double-tap the screen to bring up previews of your home screens — and tap one to jump to that screen.
The developer recently introduced HelixLauncher2 beta (
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=641216), which is designed for the Google Nexus One and other phones running Android 2.1, and the app is now available as a free download from the Android Market.
It’s worth noting that HelixLauncher 2 is still in beta and it still has a few rough edges. For instance, after adding some widgets to the home screen, the app became unstable and would crash periodically — including when I press and hold those widgets to remove them. But the app is still under active development. There have been about 7 updates since the developer introduced HelixLauncher2.
