[FEATURE] App Drawer: Add option for list of apps instead of a grid

thehale commented 1 year ago

Describe the feature

After switching to Lawnchair from Productivity Launcher, I have found myself greatly missing their fast-access app drawer.

There, the app drawer is a single list of alphabetized app names (icons optional) alongside a letter-by-letter index scrollbar which jumps anywhere in the list with a single tap. As a result, I could open the app drawer and proceed to launch any app on my phone with just two taps (no scrolling).

Why would it be useful to add?

I can launch apps faster from Productivity Launcher's app drawer than I can from Lawnchair's app drawer.
- Two taps (letter -> app name) vs. Searching through the app drawer.
An indexed list of apps preserves muscle memory as apps are added/removed. In constrast, with Lawnchair's current app drawer, adding/removing an app reflows the grid of apps in the drawer, breaking all muscle memory.
Giving each app more real estate opens the door to additional productivity features (not in the scope of this issue).
- Show app usage time for the current day/week/other time period.
- Show shortcuts for the app (instead of having to long press the app icon).

Did the feature exist in Lawnchair v2? (Play Store version)

No, but Lawnchair v1 did have a setting for rendering the dock as a vertical list. That's most of the way there for this feature request.

Example(s)

Here's a screenshot of what Productivity Launcher's app drawer looks like:

Additional context

Other launchers with similar features:

Indistract Minimalist Launcher
- Identical to Productivity Launcher, but uses a slightly different animation for the letter-by-letter index scrollbar.
OLauncher
- Open source under GPLv3 (incompatible with Lawnchair's Apache).
- Instead of the quick index of letters, OLauncher automatically opens a keyboard to search the app list. As soon as the current search term narrows the list down to a single app, OLauncher automatically opens that app. An interesting feature that should get its own issue, but worth mentioning here for completeness.
Before Launcher
- Doesn't show the quick index of letters, but tapping in that right-hand area has the same effect of jumping to a specific spot in the list.
- The app includes a declaration of all the open-source libraries it uses, but I am not familiar enough with the Android ecosystem to quickly filter out which libraries are relevant to Before Launcher's app drawer features.

Comparison with other issues: This request is slightly different from the app drawer adjustments discussed in #1136 or #1880. Those issues primarily talk about breaking up the grid of app icons into a list of grids grouped by the first letter of the app name. In contrast, this issue proposes rendering the app drawer as a single list of apps. Issue #1136, however, does include a great example of a letter-by-letter index scrollbar to quickly jump to a specific spot in the app list.