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When you live with a folding phone and you’re the kind of person who likes taking total control of your Android environment, you’re bound to realize something pretty quickly:

The apps that work brilliantly in a standard Android setup don’t always work so well when you’re dealing with a dual display.

Specifically, anything involving your Android home screen is suddenly in a whole new universe.

It kinda makes sense, when you really stop and think about it: On a typical Android device — the type 99% of Homo sapiens carry around and that we’ve all traditionally been using for years now — you’ve got just that one display. And so that’s all most home-screen-related apps are created to consider.

With a foldable — whether it’s the freshly released Pixel 10 Pro Fold (better known as the latest Pixel Fold, to anyone who isn’t a complete psychopath) or any of the other foldables from Google, Samsung, Motorola, or whoever — you’ve effectively got two totally different home screens to contend with. There’s that external display home screen, which is the equivalent of the standard Android home screen on any other device, and then there’s also your internal display, which is larger and in a completely different shape and layout.

And it doesn’t take long to realize that most Android launchers — those splendidly useful tools that let you replace your entire home screen with one that’s completely customized and made to work specifically for you — simply aren’t set up to handle that thoughtfully.

There’s an exception, though. I stumbled onto it on accident whilst playing around with the latest Pixel Fold over these past few weeks, and I found myself absolutely delighted by the surprise.

Lemme let ya in on the secret.

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The Android foldable home screen champion

The launcher of which we speak is the aptly named Smart Launcher. It’s one I’ve recommended before, in my Android launcher roundups, but not one I’d used regularly — for the long haul — on my own personal Android phone up ’til recently.

I started revisiting Smart Launcher because of the unfortunate demise of another top-tier launcher option, the now not-long-for-this-world Nova Launcher (sniff). And I was blown away to see how far it had come even just since my last look at it and how handily it filled that total-control, jack-of-all-trades void left in the Android ecosystem by Nova’s departure.

But aside from its all-around ability, the part of Smart Launcher that really surprised me was how eagerly it embraced the unusual dual display situation presented by the Pixel Fold and other folding Android contraptions.

Plain and simple, Smart Launcher gives you the option to create completely separate and distinct home screen setups for your phone’s outer display and for its unfolded inner screen. That means — unlike with most other Android launchers and even with Google’s default Pixel Launcher setup — you can customize the inner screen specifically to make the most of its expanded space while keeping a totally different arrangement that makes sense for your smaller outer screen, too.

Here, for instance, is how I have my Pixel Fold’s outer display home screen at the moment — a setup that’s deliberately simple and minimalist, with a horizontally swipeable widget at the top, a few hidden gestures to get to commonly accessed areas, and a text-free list of my most-used shortcuts placed ergonomically alongside the left of the screen (a touch, incidentally, that’s inspired by Niagara Launcher — another exceptional Android launcher and long-time favorite of mine and one that also adapts itself intelligently to the foldable inner-screen setup, though in a more automated and less customizable way).

The outer home screen — similar to what I’d use on any standard Android device.JR Raphael, Foundry

Then, on my Pixel Fold’s inner screen, I’ve got a more spread-out layout that pulls pieces from that stacked widget into separate glanceable panels and moves an expanded list of my shortcuts into a dock-style design along the bottom edge of the display.

The larger inner home screen is its own separate beast.JR Raphael, Foundry

The reality is that with a folding phone, you have two very different displays that you use in very different ways — maybe even for different purposes. And this approach actually lets you customize ’em to your heart’s content, with a massive toolbox of options and without having to have one environment affect or in any way inform the other.

It just makes sense.

Now, if you’re using a foldable and want the power of a custom launcher without the complexity of creating two separate setups, you certainly don’t have to go that route. Smart Launcher has an option within its settings that lets you choose whether you want to use the same setup everywhere or maintain independent layouts for each screen with any multi-display device you’re using.

Smart Launcher puts the power in your hands to decide how exactly your foldable home screens work.JR Raphael, Foundry

But if you’re like me and actually enjoy optimizing your Android environment for maximum ergonomics and efficiency — and if you, too, find that the approach that makes sense on an outer screen doesn’t necessarily translate exactly the same way to what you need on that spacious inner display — Smart Launcher is a spectacular tool for having your cake and eating it, too. It really is an indispensable upgrade for any Android foldable.

(The app is free to use in its base form, by the by, with an optional premium upgrade that unlocks a slew of extra features.)

That, my friends, is the power of Android in a nutshell for ya. And that’s why if you appreciate advanced productivity options and truly care about making your device work the way you want, there’s no question which platform is the right place for you.

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