Niagara has just announced a new family of icon packs that are supposed to take the hassle out of usingcustom icon packsandthemed icons. The launcher’s new built-in “Anycon” icon packs use Niagara’s existing algorithm to closely match unsupported apps with generic fitting icons. The icon packs are available as part of Niagara’s Pro version and built into the launcher itself.
To start, Niagara is releasing three styles of its Anycon packs: Material, Sticker, and Watercolor. The first one showcases Google’s Material You style, though Niagara uses an outline-style look to add a custom touch. You can customize the thickness and shape to your liking. The sticker version closely resembles real-life stickers for a comic-style look on your home screen. Watercolor is similar to Material, but the shape the icons are placed in looks like it’s painted. All three icon packs support Material You-themed colors based on your home screen, but you can also pick your own color preferences or use an app’s original icon color for the latter two.
Anycon’s big promise is that custom icons are automatically applied to virtually all apps you have on your home screen. It uses Niagara’s existing Icon Assistant, now out of beta, that automatically matches smaller, specialized apps with more generic icons. For example, if the assistant recognizes an email app, it will give it a generic email icon. The same is true for a fitness app or a public transit app.
While Niagara certainly wants to cover any and all apps just based on the name of the feature, the developers say that there may be some flaws as they release it to the broad public. Given that its Icon Assistant is based on a learning algorithm, they’re confident that it should get better over time the more people use it. Niagara also wants to add more icon packs and apps in the future, with its Anycon icon packs currently covering over 300,000 apps according to the developers.
With this approach, the developers hope to fix some of the biggest gripes they’ve seen with both custom icons and themed icons. Custom icon packs often require a lot of manual tinkering to cover all the apps you want to use, so they can be cumbersome and intimidating to many. On the other end of the spectrum, themed icons are provided by the original app developers themselves on a voluntary basis, meaning that it’s very likely that not all apps someone regularly uses support themed icons.
There aren’t just icon packs in the latest update
On top of that, Niagara Launcher itself has a few more updates in store. On foldables and other big-screen devices, the widget stack can now show two stacks side-by-side. It also remembers the last-viewed widget. Niagara’s app search can now recognize typos and still surface correct results, with “Niagra > Niagara” provided as an example. On supported devices, there is “more expressive” haptic feedback. And if you want to use a different theme on Niagara than the rest of your phone, that’s also possible with this update.
The Anycon update is rolling out on the Play Store over the next few days. The developers encourage those who want in on the action straight away to join the beta channel.
