Microsoft Launcher Beta Gets Plenty of New Features For Everyone

The greatest thing about Android is the fact that almost everything is customizable. In the world of customizability, Android Launchers reign at the top, with hundreds of apps available on the Play Store. While Google’s Pixel Launcher and the third-party Nova Launcher may be at the top of the list, Microsoft’s own solution has been gaining a lot of traction in the past couple of months. And now, Microsoft has rolled another set of features to the Microsoft Launcher.

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Microsoft has rolled a couple of new features to the Beta channel of the Microsoft Launcher. Amongst the new changes, you get new family features, improvements for the Cortana assistant, and more.

One of the biggest pieces of this update is the ability for parents to now choose which kids to show or hide on the family card. This builds off of the foundation of a relatively new family safety feature Microsoft recently added, which allows parents to keep an eye on their kids’ activity on Android phones running launcher, along with Windows PCs and Xbox consoles.

Other new bits include general improvements to reading news articles in Microsoft Edge, support for multi-turn SMS and calling with Cortana, and more. It also adds support for removing screens in overview mode via drag & drop gesture.

Here’s a full changelog of what’s new:

• Family: parents can show/hide kids in the Family card;
• Improvements to reading news articles with Microsoft Edge browser;
• Toggle to hide page indicator on home screen;
• Cortana: support multi-turn SMS + calling;
• UI improvements: welcome page, settings page, widgets & context menu;
• Support for removing screens in overview mode via drag & drop

The aforementioned changes have been introduced in Microsoft Launcher version 4.11 and is available on the Google Play Store.