This news is definitely a long time coming. Yahoo Aviate has announced the addition of a single, “small” feature that increases the launcher’s usefulness quite dramatically. Now users will be able to create their own custom collections and will no longer be bound by the categories that Aviate has defined for them.
Aviate is made up of four “panels”: the dynamic context-based Spaces panel, the space-limited Home screen, the semi-dynamic Collections, and the Apps list. The Collections part, which, as the name suggests, groups your apps into themes, is only partly dynamic because Aviate automatically tries to fill it up with related apps. These collections can then be used in their own specific panel or added to the dynamically changing Spaces panel. Unfortunately, ever since the launcher’s debut, users were limited to choosing from among Aviate’s curated set of default collections, ranging from Entertainment to News to Home to Cooking. Sure you can manually add apps to those collections, but you will inevitably hit a wall when it comes to mixing up your own preferences. Well, not anymore.
You can now create your own Collection, though it won’t be as automated as pre-made ones and won’t have the “Show suggested apps” button. Creating your own collection is quite simple. Scroll down to your list of collections, tap on the Add Collection button, and then scroll down to the bottom of the list again to see the Create Your Own label. All that’s left for you to do is to give it a name and fill it with apps. Such a simple functionality that makes you wonder why it took them this long to implement.
Yahoo Aviate is an interesting take on an Android launcher. It adds a dash of context-based features and doesn’t follow the conventional aesthetics of majority of launchers in the market. The update is already available on Google Play Store and should be rolling out to users. If you don’t have it yet, give it a try. After all, it’s free. Or you can also take a peek at our early hands-on experience or see how Aviate measures up to other “smart” launchers on Android.
SOURCE: Yahoo Aviate
Long time coming, indeed. Since they added the “photography” grouping and the music space, I haven’t really needed anything Aviate doesn’t already provide.