Nova Launcher 7 has improved animation for the home gesture in Android 12

Animations, not least transition animations, can make mobile platforms more pleasant to use and give a sense of fluidity. An important animation is the one that appears when an app on the home screen is opened and users subsequently return to the home screen.

The app then appears to simply shrink and return to its icon. Also, when the app is launched, a similar, but reversed, animation appears. One drawback of home screen replacements has been that these animations disappear; especially the one when returning to the home screen.

Apps have just dissolved and disappeared into thin air. Nova Launcher 7 on Android 12 has an improved transition animation – although it’s not as polished as in Pixel Launcher. The animation also doesn’t work for all apps at the moment as the video shows, but it bodes well.

Hopefully, in the long run, this could mean more polished animations for those using home screen replacements, so that replacing the launcher isn’t a disadvantage. We also tested the Nova 7 on Android 11 to verify that the animation is exclusive to Android 12.