Microsoft Updates Its Launcher With Bug Fixes & Improvements

- April 06, 2018

Microsoft has released yet another update to its Android launcher replacement, the aptly named Microsoft Launcher, that brings new bug fixes and a few other improvements. For clarity, these enhancements were already included in the update to the same version – version 4.7.5 – brought to beta users near the end of last month. However, unlike the previous update to users of the stable version of the app, which finally brought Cortana support to Android devices, this update won't bring a whole lot of user-facing changes. Instead, it appears to center around making the general experience just a little bit better than before with changes under the hood. As is always the case with updates, it may take some time to roll out to everybody. So nobody should be too concerned if it hasn't hit their own device just yet.

That means, to begin with, there are plenty of bugs that should be squashed in this update. The big ones include a fix for the top reported crash errors and problems users had noticed where the app itself stopped responding. Those issues won't necessarily be fixed for every Android handset with the update since each basically has its own custom build. However, it should solve things for most users. Beyond that, badge counts that had previously displayed with incorrect counts should now display appropriately and adjustments have been made to the wallpaper settings in order to make that whole process smoother. For user-facing improvements, Microsoft has finally enabled features that will allow the application of icon packs over single, custom-set icons. That should make it much easier for users to get exactly the look they're going for without having to find a perfect icon set that covers every application they have installed. Last but not least, the company says it has improved the overall experience by optimizing the launcher replacement app's resource allocation in terms of CPU and memory. The result should be a boost to overall performance over the previous iteration of Microsoft Launcher.

Microsoft's free launcher replacement app has come a long way since stepping out as something more closely resembling the company's launcher for its own mobile OS. In fact, there isn't a lot it can't do that any modern Android launcher can. With this latest update in place, now may be the time to try it out for those users who love to customize their devices but haven't checked it out yet.

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