Android Refresh Tuesdays – Minimalist theme

Welcome back to Android Refresh Tuesdays, where every Tuesday we show you how to give your Android home screen a fresh new look.

This week's theme is minimalism, which was chosen by your votes. Vote for next week's theme below.

And in the spirit of minimalism, we'll keep it simple – no new icon packs this time. No icons, even. You can even skip the wallpaper step – as we'll employ a launcher that can apply a new minimalist wallpaper on its own for you, daily.

Previous Android Refresh Tuesdays:

• Space theme

Step 1: Choosing a minimalist wallpaper

Although we'll be using a launcher that can pull minimalist wallpapers from the internet and apply them itself daily, in case you want to go with your own wallpaper, here are two you may like.



If you're a fan of the darker shades that are easier on the eye, download this wallpaper (shown above, left). If you want to go with the bright wallpaper (shown above, right), which does scream minimalism – download it here.

Now apply the wallpaper you've chosen and let's move on to the next step.

Step 2: Downloading a minimalist launcher

There are plenty of those, but after going through a great number of them, I've chosen Olauncher. It's simple to use, looks great, and the developer has informed us that it's completely open source, which bodes well for privacy-conscious users. Download Olauncher on your phone, open it and set it as your default launcher when you're prompted to.

You'll notice that it relies on text instead of app icons, which keeps things clean and simple. To access all of your apps that are not on the home screen, just swipe up.

Now, let's customize Olauncher a bit.

Step 3: Customize your minimalist launcher

To select which apps are on your home screen, simply press and hold an app name and you'll be prompted to change it to another app. In my case, I'd normally want Phone, Chrome and maybe Instagram, but of course you can choose whatever you want.

But remember to keep the apps as few as possible – just your most important apps, in the spirit of minimalism and simplicity. If you're after ultimate distraction-free minimalism, you could even just have Phone and Messages, as shown above. Or even no apps whatsoever!

Now let's change some Olauncher settings.



Press and hold on your home screen to open Olauncher's settings screen. From here you can select how many apps you wish to be showing on your home screen, from zero to tens.

You can also select your "Theme mode" – choose "light" if using a dark wallpaper and "dark" if you're using a bright wallpaper. This affects whether your home screen app names will appear in white or black font.

Now tap on "App alignment" and choose whether you want your app names to appear on the left, right, or in the center of your screen. This is useful if you have a wallpaper with motives you don't wish to obstruct with the app names.

Note the "Show status bar" and "Show date time" settings and set them accordingly to your preferences. You also have up to three swipe gestures you can set up for launching apps. If you have zero apps on your home screen, this can cleverly be used to access your most needed apps even with nothing on the home screen.

And lastly, tap "Daily new wallpaper" and enable it if you wish the launcher to choose your wallpapers for you. It will download and apply perfectly minimalist wallpapers for you every day, if this is enabled.

And we're done! Simplicity!

How to go back to my old Android look?