Lifehacker reader _ricketycricket modelled this extremely minimal home screen off a simple wallpaper from the Mass Effect series and lots of home screen gestures. Here’s how you can achieve the same look on your Android phone.
We’ll leave it to _ricketycricket to explain:
I’m a huge fan of the Mass Effect games. When I found this image, I knew I had to design a home screen around it, so I modified the image slightly in GIMP to fit my layout. Since I am partial to the minimal look I rely heavily on gestures to simplify things and keep a clean homescreen. Here’s what I use:
- Launcher: Nova Launcher Prime with a 12×12 grid and a 7 icon dock
- Icon Pack: Holo Theme
- Clock Widget: mClock with a modified version of the Essence theme (slightly NSFW photos)
The dock icons all have “swipe up” gestures. The Phone icon starts the phone when tapped, and Google Voice when swiped. The SMS icon starts Gmail when swiped, the Music icon starts Pandora, Chrome starts Facebook, and the Camera app starts Instagram — all in addition to their default apps when tapped.
Other gestures I’ve added include:
- Tap the home button from the home screen to open voice search
- Swipe up to open app drawer
- Swipe down to expand notifications
- Two-finger swipe up/down to show/hide notification bar
- Double tap to open settings
- Pinch out to open contacts
- Pinch in to open Nova settings
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