App launcher

The app launcher puts your app drawer inside the keyboard: a searchable grid of every launchable app, with the ones you pinned and the ones you opened recently in a row on top. Tap an app to jump to it. Hold one to look inside it and open a specific screen, like a settings page or a compose view, without going through the app's own navigation first.

It's handy mid-conversation: someone asks for a booking reference, you hop to the airline app, copy it, and the keyboard is still where you left it when you come back.

Opening the panel

Open Apps from the toolbar, or the toolbox if you haven't pinned it. Typing apps or launch offers the tool on the suggestion strip too. On a hardware keyboard, use the leader key: double-tap Ctrl, then press J.

The grid

• Search sits in the header. Tap it and the keys come back under a shortened panel, filtering live over app names and package names as you type.
• Pinned and recent apps lead the grid in their own row. Pin and unpin from an app's page, which a hold opens from the grid or from the shortcut row alike. Recents track the last apps you opened from this tool, ten by default and adjustable from 4 to 20, and they never leave your device.
• Tap launches the app. The panel closes itself, since you are about to leave the app you were typing in anyway.
• Hidden apps stay out of the grid and the shortcut row. Hold an app and tap the eye on its page to hide it. Search still finds hidden apps, shown dimmed, so you can open one or show it again from its page.

An app's page

Hold any app, in the grid or in the shortcut row, to open its page: the app's icon, name and package, a pin toggle, a hide toggle, an App info shortcut to the system settings page, and — with Open screens inside apps on — every screen (activity) the app declares.

Screens the app allows others to open are listed first. Tap one to open it directly. Android blocks the rest for anyone but the app itself, and those stay hidden unless you turn on Show private screens. Then they show dimmed with a lock, so you can explore what an app contains without wondering why a tap did nothing.

This works without any special permission. The keyboard sees the same launcher list the home screen does, and for those apps it can read the full screen table.

Options

Tools / App launcher

The screen opens with the two rows every tool has, plus the keyword group that only the tools you can summon by typing carry. The app launcher is one of them:

• Enabled: which way this starts depends on how you answered the setup wizard. The app launcher is only in the "show me everything" starter set, so the two simpler answers leave it off until you turn it on here.
• Icon colour: only shown while colorful tool icons is on globally (it is by default). It overrides this tool's icon colour, a deep purple out of the box.
• Trigger words: "apps, launch" to begin with, under a Keyword shortcut heading. A Match capitals toggle sits below it, off by default, and a Reset to defaults row turns up once you've edited the words.

Then the launcher's own group:

• Sort order: A to Z by default, or Recent first to lead with the apps you opened most recently.
• App names: on by default. Off leaves bare icons with no label underneath.
• Apps per row: Auto by default, which fits as many apps as the keyboard width holds. Pick a number from 3 to 8 to fix it. Icons that don't fit their cell shrink to fit.
• Icon size: 42 dp by default, anywhere from 30 to 60. On Auto, bigger icons also mean fewer apps per row. The pinned and recent row keeps its own size.
• Icon shape: Circle by default, Rounded square, or As on the phone to keep the shape your home screen gives each icon.
• Recent apps: on by default. Turning it off stops the tracking and deletes the stored list.
• How many recent apps: 10 by default, anywhere from 4 to 20. Lowering it drops the extra entries straight away rather than hiding them. Pick a multiple of your grid width and the row fills cleanly with no gap at the end.
• Open screens inside apps: on by default. Off leaves the app's page as its pin, hide and App info actions, without the screen list. A hold still opens the page either way, since hiding an app has no other door.
• Show private screens: off by default, and only shown while Open screens inside apps above is on. There's no screen list to add it to with that switch off. Lists the screens other apps may not open, dimmed. They're debugging fare, and a tap on one does nothing.
• Hidden apps: says how many apps you hid. Tap it to bring all of them back to the grid at once. One at a time goes through the app's own page, which a search reaches even while the app is hidden.

Privacy notes

• The app list is read from the system on your device and never leaves it.
• Recents and pins are stored as plain package names in the keyboard's own settings, nowhere else.
• The tool is unavailable before the first unlock after a reboot, like every tool that starts other apps.