Skip to content

Release 3.0

Latest

Choose a tag to compare

@achunt2143 achunt2143 released this 04 Jul 21:23
3d0efe5

Release Notes

Version 3.0.0 — July 4, 2026

This is the biggest visual and functional update W Launcher has had since the original webOS-inspired look was introduced. It's a full pass at making the whole launcher — home screen, dock, and app drawer — actually feel like a classic Palm/HP webOS Mojo & Enyo device again, instead of just wearing a few webOS-flavored icons on top of a generic layout. Bumping to a major version because of how much of the UI changed and because it's now a real Home app for the first time.

Light & Dark themes, done properly

  • Replaced the old five-way theme picker (Classic/Classic3/Mochi/Modern/System) with a single Light/Dark choice. Old installs on "Classic3" quietly migrate to Dark so nobody gets bumped back to Light without asking.
  • Light is no longer just Dark with different text colors — it's got its own blue identity across the whole app (headers, buttons, dock, icons), matching the classic webOS blue rather than reusing Dark's gunmetal gray in the wrong places.
  • Fixed a bug where the About page's header and status bar ignored the theme entirely and always rendered in Dark's colors.
  • Fixed Light theme text legibility — app-drawer labels get a subtle shadow, and the About & Settings page sits on a translucent scrim, so text stays readable against the wallpaper no matter how bright it is underneath.

Apps Drawer redesign

  • New tabbed header (System / Downloads / Settings) and squircle icon tiles, matching Mojo/Enyo's app-launcher chrome instead of the old flat list look.
  • Added a genuine frosted-glass background in Light theme. It used to just lay a translucent wallpaper over whatever was still on screen behind it, which let the home screen's recent-app cards and dock visibly ghost through — jarring, not translucent. Now it blurs and tints that content instead, so it reads as intentional glass.
  • Rounded the bottom corners of the drawer so it reads as a card sitting just above the dock, and made the status bar go transparent while it's open instead of tinting to the header color.
  • Fixed a real bug where the drawer button could spawn an unlimited number of stacked drawer instances — it now properly toggles open and closed. Root cause was a leftover safety check that was silently auto-closing the drawer moments after it opened, essentially at random; that's gone now and the button just does what it looks like it should.

Dock redesign

  • Replaced the flat, theme-blind dock bar with a frosted-glass tray that matches the drawer — blue in Light, gunmetal in Dark — with rounded top corners and a soft shadow so it reads as a floating tray rather than a bar glued to the bottom of the screen.
  • Dock icons now use the same frosted squircle tiles as the app drawer instead of a plain circular halo, so the two finally look like they belong to the same app.
  • The dock now stays visible and fully usable while the app drawer is open on top of it, instead of sliding away — you can tap a dock app without closing the drawer first.

New: long-press app actions

  • Long-pressing an app icon in the drawer now brings up the same kind of "app actions" popup stock Android launchers show: the app's own shortcuts (e.g. an email app's "Compose"), Add to Dock, App Info, and Uninstall.
  • Long-pressing a dock icon (without dragging it) shows the same popup, but with Remove from Dock in place of Add to Dock/Uninstall, since that's the action that actually makes sense there.
  • Shortcuts only show up once W Launcher is actually set as your Home app — see below.

About & Settings, combined

  • About and Settings used to be two separate screens (About had a gear icon that drilled into Settings). They're now one page — About & Settings — themed to match, with the outdated About blurb rewritten to reflect what the launcher actually does today.

Home screen polish

  • Rounded the corners on the home screen / drawer / settings container for a more card-like feel, consistent with the rounded dock and drawer.
  • Fixed the notification panel's dock-jumping and animation glitches.
  • Long-press shortcuts menu on apps.