WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:02.000 You 00:30.000 --> 00:32.000 You 01:00.000 --> 01:02.000 You 01:30.000 --> 01:32.000 You 02:00.000 --> 02:02.000 You 02:30.000 --> 02:32.000 You 02:32.000 --> 02:34.000 You 02:34.000 --> 02:36.000 You 02:36.000 --> 02:37.000 You 02:38.000 --> 02:40.000 You 02:40.000 --> 02:42.000 You 02:42.000 --> 02:44.000 You 02:44.000 --> 02:46.000 You 02:46.000 --> 02:47.000 I 02:47.000 --> 02:48.000 I 02:48.000 --> 02:49.000 Better 02:49.000 --> 02:50.000 No 02:50.000 --> 02:51.000 Yep 02:51.000 --> 02:52.000 Okay 02:52.000 --> 02:55.000 So 02:55.000 --> 02:57.000 That's what the v0 of our launcher 02:57.000 --> 03:04.320 And we developed it from scratch, which means that we didn't use any component or 03:04.320 --> 03:05.320 fork anything. 03:05.320 --> 03:09.320 We were building it from scratch. 03:09.320 --> 03:11.760 That was the very first development. 03:11.760 --> 03:14.840 And we reached a few months later, please don't share one. 03:14.840 --> 03:19.160 What we can call it, please don't share one, which was our first real-on share. 03:19.160 --> 03:21.640 You can find the link to the GitHub here. 03:22.560 --> 03:26.160 But, basically, what we developed is a grid of application, 03:26.160 --> 03:29.480 a dot, the possibility to create folder of application, 03:29.480 --> 03:32.280 and we have a left panel, which is in the right ear, 03:32.280 --> 03:35.760 but a left panel where you can set your widget. 03:35.760 --> 03:41.240 On purpose, we don't expect our users to set widgets on the main screen. 03:41.240 --> 03:47.600 Again, that's a design choice, which is not a purpose of this talk. 03:47.600 --> 03:51.400 This launcher design from scratch and built from scratch 03:51.400 --> 03:53.840 has been maintained up to Android 12. 03:58.840 --> 04:06.120 As you can imagine, we were facing some witnesses with this launcher design from scratch. 04:06.120 --> 04:11.720 The first main problem was we were facing a lot of crashes and upgrade resets, 04:11.720 --> 04:15.680 which means that time-to-time people with a large number of application, 04:15.680 --> 04:18.080 one on the right, 200-application installed, 04:18.080 --> 04:20.520 were booting their device, and the grid was resets. 04:20.520 --> 04:23.720 All the groups, all the icon arrangement, were resets, 04:23.720 --> 04:26.560 and they were starting from scratch, which was a big problem. 04:26.560 --> 04:30.320 Despite our investigation, we are not able to reproduce it reliably, 04:30.320 --> 04:36.840 so we faced a lot of difficulty to identify the root cause of this and to fix it. 04:36.840 --> 04:42.280 Another thing that comes with under-it-10 was quick step. 04:42.280 --> 04:49.280 Quick step is the system-gesture-based navigation feature and task feature in AOSP. 04:49.280 --> 04:53.800 So that's a component which lets you do those stuff in AOSP, 04:53.800 --> 05:00.760 and it was embedded within launch 3, since if I'm not strong under-it-10. 05:00.760 --> 05:03.600 Which means that for our design from scratch launcher, 05:03.600 --> 05:05.600 we were not having those features, 05:05.600 --> 05:09.040 and we were not having access, for example, to recent view, 05:09.040 --> 05:11.520 without we have to build it again. 05:11.520 --> 05:17.040 So the recent view is the feature that lets you switch between application. 05:17.520 --> 05:20.320 We were also facing some problems with Dragon Drop, 05:20.320 --> 05:27.360 and that's why we added to add a quick step APK within next-to-bliss launcher 3, 05:27.360 --> 05:34.080 next-to-bliss launcher 3, in order to get those features work properly. 05:34.080 --> 05:41.440 But, well, we feel it was more like a hack and was not convenient to maintain. 05:41.520 --> 05:48.800 So for those two reasons, we decided that we need to build again a launcher 05:48.800 --> 05:53.760 and to improve it and make something more modern. 05:54.800 --> 05:59.360 So we look at the market, what was existing, 05:59.360 --> 06:04.080 and with this and most of the launcher developed on the market, 06:04.080 --> 06:08.080 we're based on launch 3, what is AOSP launch 3. 06:08.160 --> 06:12.240 It's the default launcher in the Android ecosystem, 06:12.240 --> 06:15.520 which is the base of Google Pixel Launcher, for example, 06:15.520 --> 06:18.400 but also of the brand launcher, a line-and-and-joice launcher, 06:18.400 --> 06:22.000 which is called Trebusier, and also Launcher, 06:22.000 --> 06:23.520 which is another open source launcher. 06:25.840 --> 06:29.280 It offers the basic features that you know if you already add 06:29.280 --> 06:32.080 Google device in your hands, so an icon grid, 06:32.080 --> 06:34.880 a place, this dual mode, et cetera. 06:38.720 --> 06:42.480 It doesn't add any documentation, which was a problem for us, 06:42.480 --> 06:45.120 but we feel that with all the components, 06:45.120 --> 06:49.520 it was what that were included within this launch 3. 06:50.640 --> 06:53.440 And the example of other companies or projects, 06:53.440 --> 06:57.280 bathing their work on launch 3, it was the good pass to start working with. 06:57.840 --> 07:03.120 And we were expecting not to read on the wheel, 07:03.120 --> 07:09.120 which is what we all intend to do with open source. 07:09.840 --> 07:16.640 So we built launch 3, and I will just show you a quick demo about how it looks like, 07:16.640 --> 07:21.520 so that's my main device. So we have the icon grid that used as UCB4. 07:22.560 --> 07:26.080 We have multiple pages, we can have four doors of applications here. 07:27.040 --> 07:29.440 We can indeed reorganize the icons. 07:32.560 --> 07:37.920 As we can see, again, as I, IOS, I cannot drop an icon anywhere, 07:37.920 --> 07:41.760 we put them all at top, top left. 07:42.800 --> 07:50.160 And we have this left screen with the widget. 07:50.160 --> 07:54.400 You can add from the application you have installed on your device. 07:57.040 --> 08:04.880 So that's what we were able to build by modifying launch 3b of your to which this point. 08:05.600 --> 08:10.800 And it's quite a similar in terms of feature to what we add in launcher 08:10.800 --> 08:12.480 in a blister on shelf first version. 08:16.960 --> 08:18.560 I come back on the slides. 08:20.560 --> 08:22.080 So how did we proceed? 08:23.040 --> 08:27.120 How did it went from launch 3, which has its own design to something 08:27.120 --> 08:33.120 most similar to IOS, and what we intended to do to for, to add for our users? 08:36.160 --> 08:39.120 Well, and I'm sorry for one of the talk we had before, we forgot the project. 08:39.920 --> 08:40.800 Sorry about that. 08:42.400 --> 08:47.760 So we forgot the 12th-year project, which is the 4th itself of launch 3. 08:48.720 --> 08:52.240 In two, our GitLab repository, and yes, it's GitLab. 08:52.240 --> 08:56.320 It's not Garrett, we are at Mirina, we mostly rely on GitLab for now. 08:57.040 --> 08:58.960 So that's why it has been fucked on our GitLab. 09:00.800 --> 09:04.080 One of the main problems we add with launch 3 are not the main problem, 09:04.080 --> 09:06.720 but it's something we feel what's not convenient for our developers. 09:07.280 --> 09:11.760 And especially if we want to onboard Android developers, or Android application developers, 09:11.760 --> 09:16.960 is that launch 3 is built with AOSP, which is a complex 09:17.280 --> 09:22.880 build system, so that's why our developers are in a very early stage, 09:22.880 --> 09:29.760 migrate the application to Android Studio, in order to be easier to build, 09:29.760 --> 09:36.080 and also be able to use Android Studio features, even if we know Android Studio can be a bit 09:36.080 --> 09:40.160 heavy sometimes, it brings some improvements in terms of development. 09:40.880 --> 09:45.600 So that's what we did at a very early stage, being able to build it in Android Studio. 09:46.560 --> 09:55.280 Then development time, so we modify launch a design and UX for to meet our expectations, 09:55.280 --> 09:57.520 which are in your case, what I listed here. 09:59.920 --> 10:04.960 As I said earlier, there is no documentation, so that's purely a reverse engineering, 10:04.960 --> 10:13.200 trying to understand what our code is designed and to modify what exists in the source code. 10:13.840 --> 10:18.720 Hopefully, we didn't add to modify a lot of stuff. 10:18.720 --> 10:22.480 We disable some feature, like the Drawer mode, I listed here. 10:22.480 --> 10:27.440 And then we were able to build on top of this, some features we were expecting and looking for. 10:28.640 --> 10:33.040 So typically, rearrange icons automatically, make the icon jiglings. 10:34.880 --> 10:37.760 Well, the icon folders, we add to modify it a bit. 10:37.920 --> 10:43.760 And well, you can see, by scanning this QR code, all the modifications that we made on top of 10:43.760 --> 10:46.640 launch a three, which is around 300 comets. 10:52.880 --> 11:00.800 As any development, it takes a bit of time, and what one of the difficulty, 11:00.800 --> 11:06.240 while developing on the launcher, if you intend to do it, is to manage the wide variety of 11:06.880 --> 11:12.560 screen size that you can have on the market, especially when you deal with, 11:12.560 --> 11:17.920 when you want to build this green and have a pixel perfect alignment and all the resolutions, 11:17.920 --> 11:24.960 that's a long process to iterate, to test the emulator is indeed helpful, but not enough. 11:25.760 --> 11:31.440 And you have to collect feedback from many people and wide variety of devices, and that's probably 11:31.520 --> 11:34.240 what's taking a lot of time, the more time soon. 11:36.240 --> 11:42.800 And then, but that's more internal and for our purpose, we were migrating users from a 11:42.800 --> 11:46.160 previous version to a new version, with a completely different database. 11:46.880 --> 11:50.000 Please don't show that a database was built by our developers. 11:50.000 --> 11:55.280 Please don't show three is the database made by mostly the database made by Google for 11:55.280 --> 12:02.400 launch a three. So we had to migrate the icon position on the grid, the groups of icons, 12:02.400 --> 12:09.680 and the widgets from this previous DB, to the new one. And that's why it was kind of challenging for us. 12:12.080 --> 12:17.520 Hopefully, as I said, most of the AOSP component launchers we are untouched. We keep them as 12:18.240 --> 12:26.160 easy, and we only have to build a new features, but that's for developers, 12:27.120 --> 12:35.760 culture developers, we meant in culture. So now we released these launchers three, 12:35.760 --> 12:43.920 sorry, in May last year, what we are about is we were able to build on top of launchers three, 12:44.000 --> 12:48.880 exactly the same features we added in this launcher. It was kind of challenging and we were not sure 12:48.880 --> 12:57.280 we were, we were able to do it, but we were able without breaking it because we keep and we have 12:57.280 --> 13:04.080 no more stability. So it confirms the choice that it was the best approach to base our launchers on 13:04.080 --> 13:11.280 launchers three, because since May, I don't hear any more about bug, there is still a few, 13:11.360 --> 13:18.080 but I'm more earring about adding new features, which is always a good sign that the development 13:18.080 --> 13:26.560 is better. We improved a lot, a dragon drop of icons, which was one of the main complaints we 13:26.560 --> 13:32.960 added before with the launcher. And what is very good, also, basing your project, your launcher 13:32.960 --> 13:38.480 development on launchers three, is that it opened so do a more easy little add new features. So we 13:38.560 --> 13:45.600 focused on the first iteration on smartphone size screen size and we were able to add easily 13:46.400 --> 13:51.520 tablet mode and I would speak later that we can think about adding even more feature, 13:51.520 --> 14:03.600 way more easily than by developing from scratch. One of the challenge and it joins one of the 14:03.600 --> 14:11.760 torque we had before with forking is that we have to manage on the red versions. So before our launcher 14:11.760 --> 14:19.520 was an APK, that we built from scratch again and that we tuned to fit each on the red version. 14:19.520 --> 14:24.960 No, we are based on launchers three, which has one branch per on the red version, which means that 14:25.520 --> 14:30.880 from our for users, we want to be consistent across all on the red version. We people are running 14:30.880 --> 14:37.360 EOS and we don't want them to don't care if they are running under a 12, 13 or 14. So we want 14:37.360 --> 14:42.720 our launchers to be exactly the same on all those on the red version and that's kind of a challenge 14:42.720 --> 14:46.880 because we have to keep this consistency across three branches and three on the red versions. 14:49.360 --> 14:55.680 And indeed, as I told you before, we have a set of three on the red comets and it means that 14:55.680 --> 15:02.880 so when a new underreaction comes with its new comets, new features, etc, we have to apply our 15:02.880 --> 15:07.680 comets on top of this new branch and fix what has been changed. So that's also something which 15:07.680 --> 15:14.160 is a bit more difficult, but so far it has been not a bit less complex than expected, mostly because 15:14.160 --> 15:20.720 Google doesn't release so many new features in the previous underreaction. So knows that underreaction 15:20.720 --> 15:28.640 has been released, we released since last year. We can, there is no much feature that are coming 15:28.640 --> 15:32.640 in the launcher, it's mostly bug fix, which make our maintenance work easier. 15:34.880 --> 15:38.960 One of the challenge, if you build your launcher, is to keep a consistency in design between 15:38.960 --> 15:46.160 smartphone and tablets because there are two different screen sizes and in fact that's two modes. 15:46.160 --> 15:51.920 So as I told you earlier, we first developed on smartphones, it was working well, but when we were 15:51.920 --> 15:59.120 opening on tablets, it was kind of messy. So well, that's a kind of a new development to do 15:59.120 --> 16:03.600 and to keep the consistency in design that's worked to pay attention to. 16:06.080 --> 16:10.720 But it's easier than if you developed from scratch, we were able to add tablets. 16:10.960 --> 16:18.560 We think about working on the desktop mode, so when you plug your smartphone to a screen, 16:20.080 --> 16:24.000 and we would like because it has been asked a lot by the community, being able to add widgets 16:24.000 --> 16:30.800 on the screen, and so agreed. The main problem here is that we broke some features in 16:30.800 --> 16:37.120 launcher 3 in order to make our own behavior with the organized application at top left, 16:37.680 --> 16:42.000 and we know that it will be a bit challenging to add again, with Jets on this agreed. 16:51.440 --> 16:57.200 To give you an idea, so in terms of work, it has been two developers working on this topic. 16:58.560 --> 17:02.400 During one or five years, more or less, so they were not full-time on it, 17:02.480 --> 17:08.320 they were working also on other projects, to give you also an idea of the time it takes to build 17:08.320 --> 17:16.000 something on top of launcher 3. If you want to modify it as easily as us, indeed if you 17:16.000 --> 17:25.520 keep the main AOSP features of launcher 3, it will be less complex. I will say that the development 17:25.520 --> 17:32.240 itself was a third of that, maybe half a year, and then it was iterating to fix all the 17:32.320 --> 17:38.480 bugs, and we add in our development, being able to address all the issues with screen resolution, 17:39.440 --> 17:45.200 that was most of the time, and we manage our source code in GitHub. 17:47.040 --> 17:56.800 So that's almost how we modified launcher 3, and as I told earlier, we confirm that from our perspective, 17:56.880 --> 18:03.920 it's definitely the best way of the easiest way to develop a launcher from scratch, 18:03.920 --> 18:08.640 having done the two experience of from scratch and from launcher 3. 18:10.800 --> 18:16.320 I reach the end of this talk, which will let a bit of place for question, if you have, 18:16.320 --> 18:22.720 but before I spoke about Blistoncher and Blistoncher 3, and you might ask where is Blistoncher 2. 18:23.600 --> 18:29.920 In fact, it was an attempt, it was an attempt to build a second iteration of our first launcher 18:29.920 --> 18:36.080 again from scratch, and it failed. It was a two complex to re-implement or two complex four 18:36.080 --> 18:41.920 team size with mostly one developer dedicated to it. It was two complex and too long to re-implement 18:41.920 --> 18:49.440 again, or what is done in launcher 3. So after some time, we stopped this Blistoncher 2 project, 18:49.520 --> 18:57.040 and with that's where we moved to Blistoncher 3, based on launcher 3, because we tried twice, 18:57.040 --> 19:02.640 and definitely we feel that it's the best approach to move with Blistoncher 3. 19:07.600 --> 19:12.080 I want a bit shorter than the time slot, and we have five minute for question, probably. 19:12.080 --> 19:18.640 Thank you very much for your attention, and you can reach me here. The source code 19:18.720 --> 19:25.280 of Blistoncher 3 is here, and you have the slide with the QR code if you want them. So I 19:25.280 --> 19:32.640 don't believe there are any questions. Yep. I've noticed the visual design is quite different from 19:32.640 --> 19:40.320 the Blistoncher 3. How exactly much or did it take to implement stuff like the war effort? 19:41.280 --> 19:47.040 So the question is, how much was it complex to implement the blur effect? 19:49.520 --> 19:55.360 The blur effect was difficult to implement in both cases. We add difficulty in our first launcher, 19:55.360 --> 20:02.320 and we add difficulty with launcher 3. The R play sees where it was not so much of a problem. 20:02.320 --> 20:10.640 Okay, we'll just switch again here. So typically for the dark, it was not so much a problem. 20:10.640 --> 20:15.680 So at bottom here, but we add difficulty to add, and we didn't add the end, 20:15.680 --> 20:23.360 blur effect in the background of those icons, of those group icons. So that's for our performance 20:23.360 --> 20:33.680 is proposed mostly that we were not able to do it. So we don't see a lot of difference 20:35.920 --> 20:47.520 adding blur effect in both cases. It was difficult in both. Any other questions? 20:48.480 --> 20:57.200 Yep. What do you want to do with the blur chart 3 to detect the blur effect in some test 20:57.200 --> 21:04.240 coming in on the chart? So the question is, if we are doing some tests to compare performances 21:04.240 --> 21:09.280 between launcher 3 and the work we did, note sadly that's a good question, but we didn't. 21:10.240 --> 21:20.480 Then it runs on most of the device we tested. We recently ported on Android 12 on Galaxy S7. 21:23.920 --> 21:27.520 Yes, no, Galaxy S7 is not a good example because it doesn't have lunches 3, 21:27.520 --> 21:34.000 but on Galaxy S8 it has, and we don't notice any major issue. 21:34.960 --> 21:41.440 I'm not sure we will be asked performance to be honest as much as 3, but it keeps being usable 21:41.440 --> 21:48.880 for normal devices and normal usage. I didn't test it, but I know some people in the team 21:48.880 --> 21:57.040 are device with 200 or more application install, and I didn't hear again problems from there. 21:57.040 --> 22:03.440 So indeed, maybe on a very old device with a lot of application, it will fast problem, 22:03.440 --> 22:06.960 will it be worse, or better than with launcher 3? I don't know. 22:27.600 --> 22:46.400 So the question is, if I understand, what do we do? If Google stops supporting launcher 3, 22:46.400 --> 22:51.360 is that correct? That's a question. Well, we will continue probably as before. We'll 22:51.680 --> 22:59.280 work on launcher 3 and keep continuing to move it to the new Android versions. We will not have 22:59.280 --> 23:06.320 the choice, but that is a base. We will bring way more features. That said, I feel there is a 23:06.320 --> 23:13.840 very low chance that Google stops supporting launcher 3, because again, that's a base that's 23:13.920 --> 23:20.480 open source space, which is used widely and especially for some OEM. So I think that don't have 23:20.480 --> 23:27.600 any interest to close sources of launcher 3. It will make the life of anybody including the 23:27.600 --> 23:38.960 partner way other. So cross-finger, but hopefully a lot of luck. I think there is still a room for 23:38.960 --> 23:50.400 one or two questions. Yes, no. No question? Well, thanks a lot, everyone, and thanks a lot for