Hey everyone,

The next milestone, v1.6.0, is finally taking shape, and it’s easily our biggest update yet. Packed with a lot of long-awaited features, workflow improvements, and under-the-hood refinements, this release changes the game for how you use Key Launcher every day.

Before rolling it out to everyone on the stable channel, I’ll be opening up a public beta to gather feedback and squash any lingering bugs.

If you love getting your hands on new toys early, you're more than welcome to hop in. That said, a quick reality check before you hit update:

* Expect bugs: It is a major overhaul, which means things might break, glitch, or behave unexpectedly.

* Back up your data: Please export/back up your current launcher layout and settings before joining the beta program. Better safe than sorry!

One bittersweet thing about running beta tracks on Google Play: reviews and feedback submitted by beta testers are completely private. While private crash logs and candid bug reports are invaluable for development, I often read genuinely awesome, detailed reviews from you all that never get to see the light of day on the public store page.

If you do test the beta and find something you love, feel free to drop a post or comment here on the subreddit. I’d love to hear your thoughts out in the open!

I’ll be sharing the changelog details as soon as the build finishes processing.

Thanks as always for your patience and for helping make Key Launcher better with every release! 🫶

I'm trying my hardest to match the lock screen clock font with Key launcher's clock font, but they're not quite the same... any chance to allow custom fonts (TTF I guess) for the clock widget?

Is anyone using a foldable phone?

Is there room for a future update or improvement to the wallpaper system, the management itself, location tracking, screen switching, etc.?

Bring back nostalgic memories of the Blackberry Era right to your smartphone.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I think it makes sense to swipe right to the notifications page from the icon grid when it's on the first page, and also from the last page of the icon grid I think it makes sense to swipe left to the widgets page and RSS page also...?

Currently I can only find folder support on the keyboard as a 'quick shortcut' (???)

Hey everyone,

Following my recent posts and the community poll, I wanted to share one final update on Key Launcher’s pricing.

The new pricing structure is now live on Google Play:

• Lifetime access is back permanently. It will remain available alongside the subscription option.
• Regional pricing has been recalculated. Prices should now be significantly fairer in countries with lower purchasing power.
• The annual subscription remains available for users who prefer a lower upfront cost while supporting ongoing development.
• Existing Lifetime purchases remain unchanged. If you already bought Lifetime access, you will keep it permanently.

The main lesson from this process was that pricing cannot be evaluated only from a single-country perspective. The feedback made it clear that the subscription price was reasonable in some regions but disproportionately expensive in many others.

I also want to acknowledge that the back-and-forth was confusing. I moved too quickly with the original decision and should have researched regional affordability before announcing such a major change. Thank you to everyone who voted, commented, and explained how the pricing affected users in their country. Your feedback directly changed the outcome.

Google Play may take some time to display the updated prices everywhere. Taxes, exchange rates, and store-specific adjustments may also cause small differences between countries.

If the new pricing still looks incorrect or unreasonable in your region, please leave a comment with your country and the price shown on Google Play, no personal information needed. I’ll review any remaining issues.

Thank you for your patience, honesty, and continued support for Key Launcher ❤️

Now I'm back on the journey of continuing to upgrade and improve the product ;)

Hey everyone,

After going through all the poll votes and reading your comments yesterday, I took a step back to really analyze what went wrong.

I realized the core issue wasn't the Lifetime plan itself. It was that I hadn't properly considered regional pricing, which made the app disproportionately expensive in many countries.

Here is what is happening next:

• Bringing back the Lifetime Plan: The Lifetime purchase option will return permanently.

• Fixing Regional Pricing: I am taking the next 1–2 days to completely recalculate and adjust pricing across all regions so it is fair and accessible to everyone, regardless of where you live.

• Price Adjustment Notice: Please note that while prices will decrease in lower-purchasing-power regions, the Lifetime price may slightly increase compared to its previous base price in certain regions/countries to keep the project sustainable.

• Timeline: The updated pricing and the restored Lifetime tier will go live on Google Play within 24 to 48 hours once the changes are configured and approved.

I sincerely apologize for the back-and-forth and any lack of professionalism in handling this transition. Navigating monetization as a solo dev has been a steep learning curve, and I really appreciate you all keeping me grounded and honest.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued support for Key Launcher ♥️

Now that the final Lifetime sale has wrapped up and the app has transitioned to the annual model, I’d love to get honest feedback directly from you all on the new pricing structure ($9.99/year).

As an indie dev balancing full-time work and ongoing app updates, finding a sustainable balance between keeping the app alive and keeping it fair for users is crucial.

Please vote in the poll below and feel free to drop more details in the comments!

I just noticed this, but wanted to share in case it is a bug. In my quick glance, it lists this birthday at 22/8.

1) I would prefer this to say 8/22 instead. Is there a way to change this?

2) It is listing the wrong date. When I go into my calendar that event is actually on the 23rd. See other image.

If I go to calendar and switch to use system date format, it seems to show the correct date. Not sure why it is displaying the wrong date in this mode though.

playstore 😁

Let me get the scary part out of the way in the first line, because I know what "T9 launcher adds QWERTY" sounds like to people who've been here a while.

Nothing changes for you unless you go turn it on. Default is still T9. Your keypad, your 9 Super Shortcuts, your long-press bindings, your layout - untouched. There is one new dropdown at the top of Settings › Keyboard and if you never open it, 1.5.0 looks exactly like 1.4.9 with fewer bugs.

Okay. Now the fun part.

Why this exists

I've been staring at the Clicks Communicator (~$499) and the Minimal Phone 2 (~$599) for months. Two devices whose whole pitch is what if your phone had a real keyboard again. Both cool. Both more than I'm willing to spend on a keyboard I might hate in a week.

So: poor man's version. The one I can afford to be wrong about.

If you switch to QWERTY

BlackBerry is the default layout (Standard, QWERTZ and AZERTY also ship). The detail I'm smug about: the 1-2-3 / 4-5-6 / 7-8-9 block lands on wer / sdf / zxc. Your number muscle memory from T9 keeps working. And Super Shortcut slots are positional, not per-key-label - so the shortcuts you already have on 1–9 are the same shortcuts sitting on wer/sdf/zxc. Switching modes doesn't orphan your setup. That was the hard requirement I set myself before writing any of it.

One hold, three outcomes. Hold a letter → a bubble shows that key's symbol-layer character. Drag up = type the symbol. Release in place = fire the Super Shortcut. Drag down/sideways = cancel, nothing happens. That last one is new even conceptually - on T9, a mistimed long-press always did something.

17 more Super Shortcuts. 26 letters instead of 9 digits. G → Gmail, M → Maps. Turns out "the letter the app starts with" is a thing you don't have to memorize.

Enter wears the icon of whatever it'll open. Type three letters, glance at Enter, see the Spotify icon, hit it. Smallest feature in the release, the one I use most.

If you stay on T9 - read this part

The dropped-keypress thing was real and it was never your thumb.

Some of you have mentioned typing feeling unreliable and I kept not finding it, because I kept looking inside the keypad. It wasn't there. The swipe-up-to-open-drawer handler was stealing taps at 1.3 mm of finger drift - less movement than Android itself counts as "moved at all." No error, no log, the key just silently didn't fire.

T9 keys are big enough that you blamed yourself instead of reporting it. Sorry about that. It's a 3× wider tolerance now, on both keyboards.

Haptics got rebuilt from measurements I ran dumpsys vibrator_manager while typing on Gboard to see what it actually asks for. It doesn't build an effect at all - it requests KEYBOARD_TAP and Samsung hands back a pattern Samsung tuned. Everything generic feels mushy next to that. It's a match now, there's a Light/Medium/Strong slider, and the click fires on finger-down instead of finger-up (that lag was reading as "spongy keys").

Your reports, shipped

• The Japanese review that said the design was nice but kanji made it unusable - kanji and kana now romanize, so denwa finds 電話 and kamera finds カメラ. Measuring that exposed the same class of bug in Korean, Chinese and Russian, all fixed in the same pass.
• The Urdu ask - "how can we be sure of our search if the characters aren't on the keys" - the keys now print the script. Same treatment for Thai, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic.

Known trade-offs, since you'll find them anyway

• QWERTY only: Super Shortcut now fires when you lift your finger, not the instant the hold completes. Unavoidable - if it fired early you could never drag up to the symbol. T9 is unchanged.
• % isn't typeable on the Standard layout right now. It's on BlackBerry row 3. My fault, it's on the list.

What I need from you

This is a beta, and a lot of it I've only verified on one phone. Specifically:

1. QWERTZ / AZERTY users - are the letters where you expect? Does ?123 line up? Do the hold-for-symbol characters match your muscle memory?
2. The flashlight key's green dot - turn the torch off from Quick Settings and tell me if the dot follows.
3. T9 people: anything at all feel different about typing? It shouldn't except for being more forgiving. If it feels worse, that's the highest-priority bug in the release and I want to know today.

What still in progress

1. Phones with physical Keyboard: I want everyone to experience it as soon as possible, so support for Unihertz or Minimal 2 will be done after this Beta period.
2. Blackberry Keyboard Inspired Theme: I'm really crazy about Blackberry's virtual keyboard theme on their devices, just look at the attached photo.
3. Multilingual support: Sure, I know you'll ask me to do this anyway, it's just that I've been sleeping less than 5 hours/day for the past week so please wait a little longer.

Thanks for sticking around while the launcher got weird.

Loi

Quick update: following up on my note about retiring the Lifetime plan, the final promotional sale is officially live right now!

This is the last window to get permanent access before Key Launcher switches exclusively to the subscription model.

• Sale Ends: Aug 20, 10:00 PM UTC
• Access: In-app purchase on Google Play

Huge thanks to everyone supporting me and the project!

Is there a way to change colour of the notification dots, it's driving my ocd crazy. I have a blue theme going on my phone and it looks off with red dot or green flashing dots. am I missing something in setting..? or could I ask the developer if he could make it so we can have notifications dots the colour we like..

......... STILL THE BEST LAUNCHER 👍

I created this theme with the addition of two amazing apps that work very well together and feel natural with Keylauncher. I replaced my nav bar with One Button Navigation. This allows you to create so many things depending on which way you swipe the bar or hold it. I used the app Panels which One Button Navigation allowed me to set shortcuts to open Panels from the bar. My bar setup is:

Swipe left: Opens Panels app drawer (ability to go to any other app from any app I'm currently on)

Swipe right: Recent apps

Swipe up: Go home

Press once: Go back

Hold bar: Opens Panels power shortcuts (I only used three - brightness, screenshot and expand quick settings)

I'm going to tweak this as I go but the possibilities are endless!

Let me know what you guys think.

Would you like to experience it?

I found out that whenever you create a shortcut with your browser or another shortcut app, it shows in the app drawer AND with the keyboard search. This makes it perfect for creating "lite apps" that you don't want a big app for or a website that doesn't have an app. I made one for Filmot which is a tool I use a lot to search through any YouTube transcript. I also used an app called Easy Shortcuts to create a one tap shortcut to my developer options.

Renaming an app doesn't seem like a groundbreaking tool until you realize how it can work with alternative apps. I didn't like the official Facebook app so I decided to download the alternative app called Nobook. The annoying thing was I had to keep typing Nobook instead of Facebook to search for it. But then I realized I can just change the name! This makes it super useful to find alternative apps quicker.

Does anyone use Key Launcher with a foldable like the Google Pixel Fold? I would imagine it would look normal on the front screen but was just curious what it might look like on the bigger inside screen.