Nova Launcher 5.1 has been in beta for a good little while, and today, the developer announced that it’s leaving beta and heading to the stable channel on Google Play. Nova Launcher 5.1 brings some pretty useful changes and new features to one of the most popular third-party launchers on Android today. One of the big new features in this new version of Nova Launcher, are Dynamic Badges. This offers a new way to peek at your notifications. It basically takes the unread badges that Nova Launcher has had for a few years, to the next level. For example, on an email app, instead of showing the number of unread messages, it will show you who the messages are from. So you can see who the message is from without opening the app, making it easier to peek and see what that notification is.
In this update, Nova Launcher also plays a bit better with the system level themes that are found on many smartphones, particularly Huawei and Samsung devices. Meaning that you’ll be able to still use some of the themes for the Galaxy S8, while using Nova Launcher on your device. The update also includes some fixes for the Galaxy S8, so that users of the brand new Galaxy S8 should have a better experience with Nova Launcher with this update.
The update is available in the Google Play Store right now. For those that may not know what Nova Launcher is, it’s a third-party launcher that you can install on your Android device and change up the look of the home screen and the app drawer. For example, if you have a smartphone like the Xiaomi Mi 6 that doesn’t have an app drawer, you can easily install Nova Launcher on your device and have an app drawer. It also speeds up your device and adds all types of features, as well as having support for just about every icon pack that is available on the Google Play Store. You can download Nova Launcher from the Google Play Store now, and enjoy the new dynamic badges that is part of the new version.