Android is an extremely customizable OS. You can change the entire home screen launcher, icon pack, wallpaper, and more. On some devices, you can even change the way your software behaves at a system level. You used to have to root your Android phone to allow this level of customization, but now it’s offered by default by a lot of smartphone OEMs.
Last week, we asked you how much you customize your Android phone. Do you just do simple things like change the icon layout and wallpaper? Or do you go all out and make a completely custom interface? Out of over 6,300 total votes across the website and Twitter, a surprising amount of you only customize a handful of things.
How much do you customize your Android experience?
Results
According to polls on the website and Twitter, the majority of Android Authority readers (43.58%) only customize a handful of things on their smartphones. Icon packs, wallpapers, and the general layout of the home screen are all easy enough customizations to make out of the box, so it’s no surprise to see this as the front runner in the poll.
Add that to the 18.3% of voters who say they customize very little on their smartphones, and you have a total of 61.88% of voters (or 3,931 participants) who only really customize the bare essentials.
30.64% of voters say they customize everything — icon packs, device themes, wallpapers, home screen launchers, etc. I’m assuming these are also the voters who used to (or still do) root their phones to add even more customization to their phones.
Finally, 7.48% of voters say they don’t customize anything at all.
More posts about Android customization
Here’s what you had to say
Here are some of the best comments from last week’s poll explaining why they voted the way that they did:
- Paul: I guess we need an entry between “customize everything� and “a few things�, but I guess the first one is a closer fit to me.
I sometimes spend way too long in the stock theme store, and I have control over pretty much everything including fonts, icons, sound libraries, wallpapers and backgrounds in apps, and even system menu colors. And if I really want to go crazy, I can use the freeform themes and make my icons all trees in a forest, placed wherever I want. My biggest gripe is the theme store has TOO many options, and I can get lost. But, I’m happy with my current setup and… darn, just opened the theme store and saw a new theme called “Cube Wall� that looks amazing! Hmmm, wonder how glass icons would look with that. See ya guys a little later!PS: Just found out the background is three screens wide, and scrolls when you flip pages. Nice touch. - AnySmarterIdRunLinux: Nova Launcher, unmodified for last 4 years
- Carlos Casas: Nova Launcher and make it look like pixel
- Deanos: I like my way I have my apps and screen layouts. Kept it the same on the past 3 Android phones. Just easy to find what I want and when I want and don’t have to fumble around looking for things.
5 screens with 3 having apps and the other 2 with some widgets.
Simple enough. - NinjaByte: I even [get] rid of search bar at the top from the default launcher via adb.
- Susan Beedle: I like seeing the home back and recent icons change with the theme, there are some really pretty ones, such as butterflies and leaves etc I sometimes just use the gestures but prefer the buttons
- Susan Beedle: I customise my s8 with themes and different icons all the time. built a large collection. haven’t done the fonts but wallpaper, icons and AOD.
- name less: First apps installed on a new phone or after every reset
Tasker
Several AutoTools Tasker Plugins
KLWP
KLCK
Icon Packs
Nova Prime
Wheel launcher - White Razor: If I can customise to make my life more efficient, I probably will try unless I have to keep installing new apps. I tend towards function over form.So many features in launchers I feel should be baked into the OS now.
- roaduardo: I used to go a bit nuts with the level of customization. Making my own custom icons, wallpaper, widgets and other things. It was a fun little hobby. I still use Nova Launcher but I don’t go nearly as far with customization as I used to.
- Niraj Bhatt: my home screen is just the wallpaper of the day(bing), nothing else!
That’s it for this week. As always, thanks for voting, thanks for the comments, and don’t forget to let us know what you thought of the results below!