[APP][4.1+] Hangar - Smart recent app shortcuts & statistics

[blk_jack]

What is Hangar?

Hangar is an Android app that provides easy, relevant shortcuts in your notification drawer to your most used and relied upon apps.

This lightweight notification bar gives you convenient access to these apps from anywhere in Android while intelligently updating the priority and order of the shortcuts based on your daily use.

With the new pinned apps feature, favorite apps can be pinned alongside the ones Hangar has set. Want a fresh look on those shortcuts? Hangar now supports custom icons, letting you set a stylized theme by installing one of the many gorgeous icon packs available on the Play Store.

Hangar also keeps track of app usage statistics and includes 2 highly customizable widgets.​

Features include:

• Auto-updating notification drawer shortcuts containing your most used and important apps
• Sort and display apps based on user specified weight factors
• Pin apps to always display
• Support for icon packs and custom icons
• Optional second row of icons
• Multiple page switching in notifications
• Blacklist unwanted apps
• Fully customizable! Change the number of shortcuts, icon color, icon size, background and more..
• Additional re-sizeable widget to launch apps
• Re-sizeable widget to view app use statistics with color coded bar graphs
• Widgets intelligently scale according to size and device

FAQ:

Q: How do I pin apps or select specific apps to appear in Hangar?
In Hangar go to Settings => Apps, select an app and "Pin app" from the menu.

Q: How do I customize the icons Hangar displays?
You can apply an icon pack by selecting "Icon pack" in Settings => Appearance. You can also manually adjust each app's icon in Settings => Apps by selecting an app and choosing "Change icon".

Q: How do I remove the statusbar icon?
You can change the position in the Settings => Behavior screen. If you select the bottom position, the icon goes away! One limitation of Android 4.4 and older is that on-going notifications require a notification icon in order to have TOP_PRIORITY as a notification. As a workaround, there are a number of icon choices (Settings => Appearance) which includes a Transparent icon. That icon creates a transparent gap, of course, but it's the best you can do without lowering the priority.

On Android L however you can have notifications set to display on the bottom and manually give them priority. This is done by longpressing the notification itself and manually toggling Priority in the settings page.

Q: I can't install Hangar in my country!
This is caused by Google limiting in-app purchase apps (which Hangar uses for donations) to exclude certain countries. However, since Hangar is open source, you can always install it via F-Droid. F-Droid is an open source app store that will automatically notify you and let you automatically install new versions when they come out. Go grab F-droid here: https://f-droid.org

Q: Will Hangar drain my battery?
No! It uses very little memory and very little CPU. It also only runs while your phone is awake and does not hold wakelock.

Q: Can I have the recency weight and in-app use stats last a week/month/6mos/etc?
Right now time is added forever. This is one of the highest priority features and will be coming in the near future.
​

Screenshots:

Lollipop​

Notification bar + widgets​

Settings​

Google+ community for beta testing and discussion:
http://goo.gl/ZD7e6n


Milestones, planned features and issues:
https://github.com/corcoran/Hangar/issues


Hangar is licensed under the GPLv3 from the Free Software Foundation.
https://github.com/corcoran/Hangar

XDA:DevDB Information
Hangar, App for all devices (see above for details)

Contributors
blk_jack
Source Code: https://github.com/corcoran/Hangar


Version Information
Status: Stable
Current Stable Version: 2.7
Stable Release Date: 2016-10-25

Created 2014-06-02
Last Updated 2016-12-27

 

[blk_jack]

Reserved

Change Log:

Version 2.7 (Oct 25th)

• [Fix!] Bring back position setting for MM/L users
• [New!] Hangar Settings shortcut from Notification/App settings
• Updated translations

Version 2.6 (Dec 17th)

• [Fix!] Android L support!
• [New!] Added background color option for L devices
• Hangar restarts when killed by Android

Version 2.5 (Sept 14th)

• [New!] Launch apps in floating windows (supported ROMs only)
• [Fix!] Crash on start
• [Fix!] Notification, Apps widget freezes
• [Fix!] Icon pack sorting and bug
• [Fix!] Apps tab optimizations/fast load
• Added Chinese/Hebrew translations

Version 2.4 (August 14th)

• [New!] Multiple pages in notification bar
• [New!] Rounded corners option in widgets
• [Fix!] Fixed settings bug on app pin

Version 2.3 (July 29th)

• [New!] Pinned app feature
• [New!] Icon pack support
• [New!] Per-app manual icon selection
• [New!] Second row feature
• [New!] Sorting added to Apps section
• [New!] Ultra efficient Smart notification sort
• [New!] German/Danish translations
• [Fix!] Revamped icon caching
• [Fix!] Apps section now uses far less memory
• [Fix!] Icon creation made more efficient
• Updated app icon (Material design)
• Updated Instructions

Version 2.2 (July 3rd)

• Added all white icon
• Added notification icon size options
• Added Contribute section
• Fixed DB sync exception
• Min version of Android lowered to 4.1+
• Added translations for Portuguese / Spanish / Italian / Polish / French / Russian

Version 2.1.1 (May 30th)

• Fix rare crash when setting icon/priority.
• Added multi-threading to some UI components in Settings.
• Added Instructions.

Installation:

• Install Hangar via Google Play [link]
• Install Hangar via F-Droid [link]

 

[blk_jack]

Reserved

Who cares?

Hangar is somewhat of a niche tool and may not provide much use to people who extensively modify custom ROMs.

What makes Hangar unique is that the shortcut bar is not hardcoded. It is dynamic and based off the apps you use and rely on most. If this functionality, coupled with the fact that Hangar uses Android's native notification drawer in a lightweight and universal manner appeals or interests you then Hangar might be an app worth checking out.​

Free?? As in beer or freedom?

Both! Hangar is GPLv3 licensed with the full source available on my github. Please feel free to send me pull requests with new features, bug fixes, etc, or visit the github page to look at planned features.​

 

[Rauch]

Great app, keep up the good work!

 

[SushiR]

Awesome job!

 

[jugg1es]

Very nice app, good work.

“Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”
― Robert Harris

 

[mystertom101]

wallpaper from OP?

 

[nikozzzzzz]

Nice work

Awesome idea!
Is there some restriction explaining inability to run on android version < 4.2 ?

 

[blk_jack]

wallpaper from OP?

@mystertom101 Extracted it here. I forget the original source, I think it's a Gnome wallpaper from years ago that I modified.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2094658/blk_jack_wallpaper.png

Awesome idea!
Is there some restriction explaining inability to run on android version < 4.2 ?

I tried to be quite progressive in my use of the Android SDK API. There's 1 particular function that I ended up using that specifically requires 4.2. Otherwise the app could run on 4.1, but I thought the hit in terms of performance and ease by not using this function warranted sticking to a 4.2 minimum.

That said, custom notifications in general require at least 4.X, so I couldn't go much lower than 4.2 anyway.

Hope that helps clarify.

 

[sixgunmojo]

Nice app - one request

Nice app, love the concept, as I can't stand apps on my home screen. I'm currently using LMT Launcher (pie) and Swapps to access apps from my home screen. While I will probably never get rid of LMT until we get decent, voice-activated AI, Swapps has some (to me) minor irritations. The one request I have, if possible, is to give us an option to manually chose which apps are displayed because right now most of the apps apps that are (or would be) in Hangar are the apps that I access from LMT. Give us that and I'll be using this in a heartbeat. Theming would also be nice (see screenshot), but is not the deal-breaker that not being able to chose my apps is. I'll be keeping an eye on this.

PS if I'm an idiot who can't figure out how to manually set apps some simple instructions would be nice.

 

[blk_jack]

Nice app, love the concept, as I can't stand apps on my home screen. I'm currently using LMT Launcher (pie) and Swapps to access apps from my home screen. While I will probably never get rid of LMT until we get decent, voice-activated AI, Swapps has some (to me) minor irritations. The one request I have, if possible, is to give us an option to manually chose which apps are displayed because right now most of the apps apps that are (or would be) in Hangar are the apps that I access from LMT. Give us that and I'll be using this in a heartbeat. Theming would also be nice (see screenshot), but is not the deal-breaker that not being able to chose my apps is. I'll be keeping an eye on this.

PS if I'm an idiot who can't figure out how to manually add apps some simple instructions would be nice.

Thanks for the feedback!

Right now, Hangar uses a combination of recency, in-app use time and total # of launches to determine the importance of an app. You can modify the "weight" to favor one of those metrics, but based on those things it shows you apps in your notification drawer.

As you use your apps, Hangar will "learn" and adjust accordingly, prioritizing your most used/needed apps and rearranging the notification drawer shortcut bar.

So to answer your question -- currently there's no way to manually "stick" an app. That said, you can blacklist, say, the apps you access from LMT, which would cause Hangar to display others, again based on the metrics I mentioned above.

While you can't modify the background (Android limitation), you can modify the color of the app icons in the notification drawer. There's a Colorize option in Hangar Settings -> Appearance.

Hope that helps!

 

[sixgunmojo]

Thanks for the feedback!

Right now, Hangar uses a combination of recency, in-app use time and total # of launches to determine the importance of an app. You can modify the "weight" to favor one of those metrics, but based on those things it shows you apps in your notification drawer.

As you use your apps, Hangar will "learn" and adjust accordingly, prioritizing your most used/needed apps and rearranging the notification drawer shortcut bar.

So to answer your question -- currently there's no way to manually "stick" an app. That said, you can blacklist, say, the apps you access from LMT, which would cause Hangar to display others, again based on the metrics I mentioned above.

While you can't modify the background (Android limitation), you can modify the color of the app icons in the notification drawer. There's a Colorize option in Hangar Settings -> Appearance.

Hope that helps!

JESUS H CHRIST!! Sometimes my inability to read and comprehend information that is right in front of me is embarrassing! This helps lots and pretty much removes any doubts/reservations/issues that I had. Going to give it a run and see how I like it.

Also thanks for the quick response and for putting this on f-droid

PS Just found out you are a Slim dev. Thanks for an awesome rom. (Sprint S3 SlimKat 5.6)

 

[Netuser]

Nice idea, subscribed for later

Thanks @blk_jack just one question you said background of app icon cant be personalized limitation of Android. How become such thing cant be done while I see some other mods on Custom roms where you can change whatever background you want, even in xposed Wanam and Gravitybox let you change anything.

 

[blk_jack]

Nice idea, subscribed for later

Thanks @blk_jack just one question you said background of app icon cant be personalized limitation of Android. How become such thing cant be done while I see some other mods on Custom roms where you can change whatever background you want, even in xposed Wanam and Gravitybox let you change anything.

You can change the background color of the notification drawer, and some ROMs let you change the background color of the notifications themselves. If you have a ROM that does this you should, in theory, be able to set the Hangar notification background to completely transparent (or whatever the ROM limits you to).

On one of my devices I'm still running SlimBean 4.3 (I'm a Slim developer) and we definitely included options in that version to let you customize the notification drawer to your heart's content, but on stock Android (and Slim 4.4) you can't adjust the actual notification background color.

If someone is on a custom ROM and wants to work with me to add a custom background feature for notifications (when using a custom ROM), let me know. I originally had the background color as adjustable, but realized it was confusing when a user was on stock and their changes did nothing.

 

[Netuser]

Thanks that clarify the things I hope the developer will work with you to add this directly in ROMs as it is very nice feature

Thanks again for your hard work :thumbsup:

 

[sanketss84]

Giving this a try looks like a cool app

 

[mrrocketdog]

i never use custom launchers so this is probably just right for a 'minimalistic-kinda-guy'. will give it a go and report back.
thank you for letting us enjoy your work .

err on the side of kindness

 

[mrrocketdog]

liking this alot!!
running on quantum 4.1
EXACTLY what i was needing/wanting.

err on the side of kindness

 

[garyrhuman]

amazing works, keep it up!!!:good:

 

[xdagee]

This is great, but I will love to see in the next version Hangar, supporting icon packs.

sent from an open source device