Action Launcher v50 provides more premium features for all free users

In some regions, you may get every feature for free

Chris Lacey, Android Home Screen Replacement Developer Action Launcheris celebrating the release of its fiftieth edition with some substantial additions and a major shift in the app’s business model that will give more premium features to every user, personally to those who can’t nominally pay for them.

in middle positionLacy acknowledges that the Freemium model of Action Launcher has made it nearly impossible for free users to have a good experience they would like to spend in Action Launcher Plus.

With Action Launcher v50, more Action Launcher Plus features will be available to each user, although the number of other features will depend on the market based on two factors: whether in-app purchases are available or not; If Action Search is able to generate affiliate revenue from Bing.

In this dynamic freemium model, half of the Plus’s features come free in most commercial markets including the US and Canada. In regions where in-app purchases are prohibited – India and Mexico, for example – all Plus features will be available if users enable Action Search. If no in-app purchases or Bing returns are available, free users have full access to Plus features. Brazil, Turkey and Ukraine are in the last category.

Of course, Lacy hopes its users will want to use Action Search regardless of whether each search makes money for them – it’s comprehensive on-device and web search after all – and the experience has been improved by including recently changed settings in the suggestions and the ability to apply your search On a number of different targets including Wikipedia, YouTube and other apps.

If you’re interested, here’s the full change:

• NEW: Greatly reduce features requiring Plus upgrade and make the app more appealing to non-paying customers.
• NEW: Action Search displays recently changed settings in its history, allowing one to tweak settings changes directly from the home screen.
• NEW: Add Search Target bar which displays at the top of Action Search results. Allows one to direct searches directly to popular services such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Play Store, etc.
• NEW: Settings displays dedicated search bar.
• NEW: Shortcuts to recently changed settings display at top of settings. Toggle on/off via "Help -> Recent settings".
• NEW: Customize Action Search sources.
• NEW: "Open searches in browser" setting.
• NEW: Add initial Action Search suggestions that display if there's no search history.
• NEW: Add Google Search shortcut to Quickbar's quick select panel.
• NEW: Display Plus banner on settings toolbar.
• NEW: Add 10th wallpaper to 2022 Supporter Pack.
• IMPROVEMENT: No longer request WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. The only code that used that was legacy backup code which has been disabled for more than a month.
• IMPROVEMENT: Revamp Help menu items, including adding FAQ link.
• IMPROVEMENT: Change picker settings UI to use a bottom sheet style picker.
• IMPROVEMENT: Increase max auto complete suggestions from 3 to 5.
• IMPROVEMENT: Improve algorithm for identifying settings items to display from an Action Search query.
• FIX: Squashed dock/search box on large tablets (thanks myculito#1992, Sid6Niner#5646, Grantman#1499 and others).
• FIX: Increase default workspace margin for devices with gesture navigation.
• FIX: Google search opens to google.com in a browser if the Google App is not available/disabled.
• FIX: Stability fix using composite emoji in Action Search (thanks ritsl#1461).
• FIX: Prevent opening widget picker when desktop is locked.

If you had no reason to try or even go back to Action Launcher in a while, version 50 might as well. You can download it from the Play Store. And if you’re looking to support Chris Lacy in other ways… well, he doesn’t have a public tip jar, so get Action Launcher Plus and be a supporter for 2022.