Why the Pixel Launcher is the worst part of the Pixel experience

I've been using a Pixel 10 Pro for almost three months now, and I really like the Pixel experience. Its fluidity is unmatched despite the SoC not being on par with what other flagships are packing, its cameras are very good, I love the breadth of useful features , the screen is fantastic, battery life is not too shabby, and the phone as a whole offers one of the best Android experiences out there.

But there's one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb and slightly tarnishes an otherwise excellent experience. It also happens to be the one area where flexibility and customization matter most. I'm talking, of course, about the Pixel Launcher.

The Pixel Launcher greatly lacks when it comes to customization

Unlike One UI Home

Considering that Google develops Android, it feels ironic that the Pixel Launcher is so limiting when it comes to customization. One UI Home (the default launcher on Samsung Galaxy phones) really gives the Pixel Launcher a run for its money.

As someone who used a Samsung Galaxy phone for more than three and a half years before switching to a Pixel, the Pixel Launcher's lack of customization options is painfully evident. While I can do pretty much everything I want on my Galaxy S21 FE after installing Good Lock , I'm annoyingly limited in many areas on my Pixel.

I can't go beyond the 5×6 Home screen grid. I also can't swap the default icons for one of the numerous icon packs I've bought over the years because the Pixel Launcher doesn't support them.

Another thing I loved about my Galaxy was the ability to stack widgets, allowing me to keep multiple widgets in the same spot on the Home screen and stay up to date with just a few swipes, without having to leave the default Home screen page.

One UI Home supports a wide range of other customization options as well, including the ability to change only the icon size (instead of scaling most UI elements along with the icons, as on Pixel phones), customize the Recent Apps screen layout, and choose between numbers and dots for app icon badges.

Yeah, sure, that level of freedom comes with the risk that the end result can look janky and unpolished. But with a bit of restraint and refinement, I could make my Galaxy phone's Home screen look exactly the way I wanted while still being as polished as they come.

On the flip side, my Pixel offers a dearth of customization options, which makes it feel limiting after a while, especially for someone like me who likes to shake things up from time to time to keep the Home screen from feeling stale.

Now, I can live without some customization options and the inability to move the Google Search bar, but I hope Google will eventually let us go beyond the 5×6 Home screen grid and introduce widget stacking, an incredibly useful feature that should be a standard part of Android.

What really rubs me the wrong way, though, is that the Pixel Launcher lacks a bunch of quality-of-life features that a modern Android launcher simply has to have.

It's also missing features that should be standard by now

I just want to change my default home screen page

I'd understand Google's decision not to let Pixel owners change the default Home screen page if we couldn't disable launching the Google app with a right swipe. But the option to disable the Google app has been around for a while, and we still can't change the default Home screen page. Why, Google!?

I'd been using a five-page Home screen layout with the middle page set as the default for as long as I can remember. I settled on it back in my early Android days, probably after I started using custom launchers in the early 2010s.

But I can't use this layout on my Pixel. Google forces the leftmost Home screen page to remain the default, so I can't recreate the centered five-page layout I'd been using for more than a decade. As a result, I've only added three additional pages because, otherwise, there's simply too much swiping involved in reaching all my important apps and widgets. But that's just one limitation that should be removed.

For instance, I have to swipe down twice to reach the brightness slider, which makes zero sense. Every Pixel phone has a screen large enough to accommodate a bunch of notifications while still displaying the brightness slider in the initial Quick Settings panel. Granted, swiping down with two fingers from the top of the screen opens the fully expanded Quick Settings panel, but that's impossible to do with the same hand you're using to hold the phone.

The app drawer is also very limited. There's only one layout, and we can't change it. We also can't group or hide apps.

While the lack of customization options is somewhat understandable, I can't for the life of me understand why I can't change the default Home screen page or why I'm forced to swipe down multiple times to access the brightness slider. Those two options, along with the aforementioned app drawer improvements, should find their way to the Pixel Launcher sooner rather than later.

Despite its limitations, the launcher has a number of things going for it

Its fluidity rivals that of any Android phone or iPhone

The Pixel Launcher isn't that bad. While Google definitely needs to work on adding more customization options and allowing us to change the default Home screen page, the launcher excels in several areas.

For starters, I love how fluid it is. I've played around with a bunch of iPhones, a Galaxy S25 Ultra, and a couple of Chinese flagships , and none felt as smooth as my Pixel when it came to navigating the Home screen and Settings app. It almost feels as if the phone predicts what I'm about to do, preparing the action in advance and then executing it with incredible smoothness. That's the main reason I can't switch to another launcher for good.

I've been juggling between the Windows Phone-inspired METROV launcher and the Pixel Launcher, and I always end up returning to the latter because METROV has those barely noticeable but still annoying stutters when swiping around.

I also like the way the Pixel Launcher integrates features such as Now Playing , how you can add Calculator as a Quick Settings tile (which is such a small but handy feature to have), and the depth and seamlessness of Material You integration, which shouldn't be surprising considering Google is, after all, the company behind Android.

I also love the extra options available in the Recent Apps screen. I can take screenshots, extract text from images, share links and images, as well as edit and save pictures to my device, which I find genuinely useful on a daily basis. While the Pixel Launcher is limiting in many ways, there's no denying that it does more than a few things better than most other Android launchers.

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I hope Google speeds up its launcher update cadence

At the end of the day, while the Pixel Launcher does some things right and includes a handful of useful features you won't find elsewhere, the fact of the matter is that it's still very limited in many areas.

The good news is that Google is slowly adding new features and removing limitations (we can now remove At a Glance, for instance), but the company's update pace is glacial. We might get a new feature or two a few times a year, but that's about it. Compare that to how quickly third-party launchers evolved back in the day, often without introducing bugs or compromising stability and performance.

I just hope Google speeds up its development pace and starts bringing new features to the Pixel Launcher more frequently because, for years now, it has been the weakest link in the overall Pixel experience. And with each new software update, the gap between the launcher and the rest of the experience only seems to grow.