I can open almost every app faster after making this one Android change

If your phone is a few years old, you'll see a drop in its performance, no matter how well you take care of it.

Part of it is natural, and part of it comes from software updates and apps becoming more demanding.

This is the technical side of things, and you can't really reverse it. However, that doesn't mean you can't make your phone feel faster.

Certain software tricks can make your phone feel faster. However, they can't reverse hardware aging, but they can remove many of the frustrations that make your phone feel slow.

For example, I made one change to my Android phone, and it instantly reduced many of the frustrations associated with everyday tasks like opening apps.

I can open almost every app faster after making one change in my Android phone. I changed my default launcher from One UI Home to Niagara.

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Posts 13
By  Parth Shah

Niagara's unique selling point is its minimalism

And the launcher uses it to make phones feel faster

The desire to try something new wasn't the only reason I was keen on using Niagara as my default launcher on my S21.

I chose Niagara because of its unique home screen, which shows an app list in alphabetical order.

This makes the home screen look clean. You don't need to create multiple home screens to organize apps. How does that help in opening apps faster, you ask?

A launcher can't make your CPU, RAM, and storage faster. Instead, it reduces the time and effort required to locate an app.

So, as a result, you speed up the entire app launching process.

Niagara shows the alphabet on the right side of the screen, and all I do is tap the corresponding letter for the launcher to display the name of the app that starts with it.

The biggest advantage is that it makes the position of all your apps predictable. No matter how many apps you install, the alphabetical list will always keep them exactly where you expect.

If you install YouTube Music for the first time on your phone with Niagara as the default launcher, you'll always find the app by tapping the "Y."

In launchers like One UI Home, the home screens can quickly become hard to navigate as you install new apps on your phone.

However, I don't rely on this method to access all my important apps faster. A better approach is to mark all your important apps as favorites.

This brings all those app icons onto your home screen, so there is no need to recall the first letter of an app each time you want to open it.

I don't make this a long list. My favorites list contains only eight apps, and the home screen can accommodate two more titles without requiring scrolling.

Regardless of how many you add, those apps always remain within the reach of your thumb.

This way, I save a few swipes to the left and right, and those small savings add up to make everyday navigation on Android feel smooth.

Niagara changed how I use my phone

I won't say that I've become a Niagara loyalist, but I certainly want to stick to this launcher for a long time, unless the developer shuts it down.

Being able to access apps faster is one reason, but the other big one is the broader behavioral change it introduced to my daily smartphone habits.

I no longer create multiple home screens, spend time deciding where my apps should belong, rearrange app icons every few weeks, overthink my home screen setup, and group similar apps into folders.

Those used to be the first things I did when I set up a new phone. Now, after using Niagara for months, that process sounds ancient, as it eliminated the need to do any of that.

Niagara has now become so deeply ingrained in the way I use my phone that I barely think about it anymore. That's probably the biggest compliment for a launcher app.

I'm still open to trying more Android launchers

I don't want to box myself into a single launcher, no matter how highly I rate it. At one point, I considered the One UI Home launcher enough for what I needed.

I kept feeding this to myself until I tried the Niagara launcher. I completely changed my perspective on what a launcher should be like.

It can happen again with another app, but only if I keep exploring more Android launchers.

Since I have three Android smartphones with me, I can keep using two more Android launchers for experimentation while keeping Niagara as my default.