ADW Launcher is a new Android app that replaces your home screen and app drawer with a highly customizable app launcher. At first glance, the home screen looks almost exactly like the default Android 2.2 Froyo user interface, but there are a few key differences.

ADW launcher lets you view your home screen in landscape mode as well as portrait. Second, you can choose which apps will sit in the persistent dock at the bottom of the screen — if you use two apps more frequently than the phone and web browser, you can drag those shortcuts to the dock.

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The app also lets you choose how many home screens you want to have. While some phones ship with 3 and others 5, ADW Launcher lets you select anywhere from 2 to 7 home screens. You can choose to hide the notification bar when you’re on your home screen — although I’m not really sure why you would want to do that.

The app drawer tweaker is pretty crazy. While the Google Nexus One 3D program launcher shows you 16 apps at a time on a 4 x 4 grid, ADW lets you choose how many rows and columns to display in the app drawer. That means you can have up to 36 apps on a 6 x 6 grid in portrait mode, or up to 40 apps in an 8 x 5 grid in landscape.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ADW Launcher also lets you tweak animation settings, other UI elements, and what action should be taken when you pres the home screen.

ADW Launcher is available as a free download from the Android Market. It requires Android 2.1 or newer.

You can find some more screenshots after the break.

via Droid Life

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...

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