Make your Android look like Windows 10 with this launcher

The grass is always greener when all you want is everything – and this extends to customizing your device as well. Android’s got themes to make your device look like iOS or the customization layer for practically any service provider you can imagine. The next step was obviously to make a way for fervent devotees of Microsoft to replicate the PC experience on a smartphone – and not how Windows Phone already does it, but by directly copying the Windows 10 desktop and system of windows. And that’s exactly what the app Computer Launcher does.

This layer goes much further than the standard tweaks to icons and wallpaper: it completely transforms the whole Android menu system. There will be a new lower menu equivalent to your taskbar that pulls out to display your list of apps and the mosaics of shortcuts as seen on Windows 8 and onwards. The connection, audio, and battery settings are at the bottom right and obviously your open apps stack up there, too.

In terms of the home screen itself, it behaves practically identically to its default counterpart, though now your much-loved recycling bin gets a central spot and there’s a file explorer that replicates the design and layout of the Windows one, complete with windows and your folder tree to the left. As curious as it is unnecessary.

The sole inconvenient thing about all this silliness is that when you go into the aforementioned file explorer and other submenus in the interface you’ll see a small ad banner on one edge of the screen, which doesn’t really get in the way but is ugly enough to make you want to pay to get rid of it straightaway with an in-app micropayment.