When comparing Yahoo Aviate Launcher vs Microsoft Launcher, the Slant community recommends Yahoo Aviate Launcher for most people. In the question“What are the best launchers for Android?” Yahoo Aviate Launcher is ranked 3rd while Microsoft Launcher is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Yahoo Aviate Launcher is:
Calendar, social, etc, and only shows the five most important apps to you at the time, keeping clutter out of the way.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Groups apps by their functionality
Calendar, social, etc, and only shows the five most important apps to you at the time, keeping clutter out of the way.
Pro Time and location-aware launcher
For each period of the day Aviate provides different apps and information by learning from the users behavior (similar to Google Now). This can come in handy as the apps one would use in the office will most likely be different from the ones they use at home.
Pro Minimalist design
Clean and simple visuals allow for easy navigation and understanding of how to interact with the launcher.
Pro Free
The Yahoo Aviate Launcher is completely free to download and use with zero in app purchases to be found.
Pro Fluid interface
Swiping to the right opens your spaces (home, work, listening, etc), swiping to the left opens up your apps, and swiping down opens useful contextual information. Luckily all of this swiping works very smoothly.
Pro Notification badges (unread count) for select apps
Aviate supports notification badges for:
- Unread emails via the Gmail app
- Missed calls via your favorite Phone app
- Unread text messages from your default SMS app
- Apps with notification badges on the default Samsung launcher
This allows the user to easily see what apps have what amount of notifications.
Pro Support for icon packs
Aviate Launcher has built in support for icon packs. this way users can theme their launcher icons to their liking.
Pro Shortcuts
Allows one-tap access to create shortcuts to contacts, documents, websites, and even email folders.
Pro Easy to organize
It has different pages that help you to have your contacts, reminders, last files opened, and more.
Pro Simple design
Very simple drawer for productivity. Requires little time.
Pro To-do list reminder
It has a very helpful integrated to-do card/widget.
If you use Wunderlist, you may connect this, and have your tasks synced between Microsoft Launcher and Wunderlist.
Pro Utility page
Microsoft Launcher has a powerful utility page, which contains the card widgets, which are powerful widgets integrated within Microsoft Launcher.
It is a page which by default is to the left of your home screen.
Pro Notes card/widget
Microsoft Launcher has its own Notes card/widget, which you may use for easy to access notes and checkbox-lists.
Pro Icon packs
Pro Vertical scrolling
You may enable vertical scrolling for your home screen, which enables you to add multiple pages for your apps and widgets.
Pro Recents
Microsoft Launcher has a Recents card/widget, which can show you recent phone calls, social messaging, SMS, files, clipboard and camera activity.
Pro Gestures customisation
There's customisation for gestures, i.e double tap to lock phone, swipe up for app drawer, etc.
Pro Built-in search engine
Microsoft Launcher features a built-in search engine, which you may use to search the internet and your installed apps.
You may choose to use Bing, Google, or Yahoo as your search engine.
Pro Arrow Hub
Share files directly to your Arrow Hub, which you can connect to from a PC via an URL and your Microsoft Login.
Cons
Con Limited customization
Aviate limits customization because it aims for a simple design. Although a little more customization would be useful.

Con Limited shortcuts
Unable to shortcut to call/message individual contact or direct access a web page.
Con High resource usage
Con Widgets not available for new page
Con Need microsoft account to use
Con Limited Icon Customisation
You can select icons from icon packs but not from individual icon images.
Con App organization
There is no option to automatically sort apps by type and put them into one folder. You'll have to do that manually, which is a pain in the neck if you have lots of apps and want to organize them into folders.
