Google tweaks its launcher in Android 13 DP1 to accommodate a folding Pixel
Most of Android 13’s biggest changes remain hidden — including many that Google itself highlighted in today’s announcement. But some notable changes are still hiding just beneath the surface, not quite hidden or disabled, but not there unless you know what to look for. With Google’s newfound focus on big-screen devices, some changes only appear if you crank the display density, and that includes a tweak to Google’s Pixel Launcher that adds support for a second simultaneous homescreen layout. It’s a core feature for folding phones, and with it built into thePixelLauncher, a Pixel-exclusive feature, it can only mean further proof that a folding Pixel is coming.
Spotted by9to5Google, the feature is easy to trigger, just crank the “smallest width” number in developer options to something nice and high like 600 or pass a “wm density xxx” command in an ADB shell for a low number like 230 (where xxx is the number). Either way, do it while you have the Pixel Launcher visible, and you’ll be dumped into a secondary layout. By default, this mirrors your original one, but make some changes to it, change back, and your original layout will return. Switch again, and that secondary layout returns.
Changing between densities here via ADB shows two distinct layouts besides just the DPI change (as well as the new Taskbar added in Android 12L).
This seems like a pretty strange change in isolation, but there’s actually a key piece of logic behind it that justifies it. Foldables typically use multiple home screen layouts: one for the larger interior display and one for the smaller exterior display. (That is, if they have an exterior display running a full Android UI — not all do). That means you need to be able to save two layouts at the same time, one for each display. There are probably a lot of ways developers could do that if they wanted to, but one easy way is by checking the display details with a bit of math to identify them as being big or small, since it’s the feature that most easily sets them apart. That’s how many apps choose between a tablet layout or a phone layout,parsing size class(usually via width) to figure out if the current device has extra room for a different UI or not.
Changing the number we described earlier changes that math, telling the app (the Pixel Launcher, in this case) that it’s running on a big-screen device — even if it actually isn’t, now it thinks it is. And when you do that, the Pixel Launcher flips over into a secondary layout, as it would on a folding phone when switching from the smaller cover display to the larger internal display.
The Z Fold2, for example, uses different home screen layouts for the inner and outer displays with a similar method.
With all that in mind, the application of this change is pretty self-explanatory, particularly if you remember that the Pixel Launcher is a Pixel-exclusive bit of software. The only use casewecan see is that Google is giving its launcher support for multiple (folded and unfolded) layouts at different size classes in preparation for the leaked Pixel foldable.
This is hardly the only change that indicates Google’s working on one, either.Android 12L had an animation that indicated as much, astring in a camera teardownoutright said it, and that’s excluding the fact that Google would work ona version of Androidjustto deliver improvements for tablets and foldables. This Pixel Launcher tweak to accommodate multiple layouts across different screen sizes is just extra proof it’s coming — fuel for the folding Pixel fire.
In more immediately practical terms, this change doesn’t mean anything for customers and won’t prove to be a benefit to the current crop of Pixels. But it will be very handy on a future folding Pixel.
For more information, you can brush up onwhat we currently know about Google’s folding Pixel, as well asfeatures from Android 13.
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