Hacker News Reader

Are launchers fully replaceable now? I remember years back you could run another launcher but the default launcher process would still execute and remain in the background. Not really a 0 cost choice at that point - especially when phones had weak hardware.

View on HN

AFAIK they've been for many years.

Gotcha, ok. I started using Android ~1.5 I believe, so things have changed radically since the beginning. I recall this being the case in ~2.2 perhaps.

I used Android from 2.0 to 4.4, and the phones I had performed notably better with third party launchers, suggesting the original launcher process wasn't still using system resources.

It doesn't seem to be entirely isolated. Apparently going back to the old app switcher requires you to freeze or uninstall the system launcher, no matter what launcher you're using.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com