Update: Looks like Google has pushed out an update that’s starting to remove the icon size normalisation. It’s either not ready for prime time, note we were seeing some jankiness, or it was a bug not a feature (pretty good bug if you ask us.
The latest update to the Google App has begun seeding slowly to users across the Android-verse and there’s a neat surprise for Google Now Launcher users with Google including home screen rotation as well as icon size normalisation.
The option to enable home screen rotation briefly showed up in developer builds when Android-M was a thing, but was quickly removed – much to the chagrin of a number of users. The option is now back, with users having to simply go to Settings > Google > Search & Now (Google Settings App in your search drawer for those on non-Nexus devices) and select ‘Allow rotation’. Once selected, you can then switch between landscape and portrait.
The other brilliant feature is one we’ve seen previously in Nova Launcher, and more recently in Action Launcher and it addresses a pet peeve of many users: standard icon sizes. With the new launcher, once you’ve got the latest Google App, your icons are normalised. The sizing isn’t quite right, but it’s pretty decent as you can see in this gif:
The update will roll out to users over the coming days and weeks, but of course there’s a way to get them early. APKMirror has the different versions of the Google App for both ARM and ARM64 processors.
Yessss! This has been something I’ve been hoping for since I jumped on the android bandwagon.