How To: A Beginning User's A to Z Perspective
uiTotalLauncherManual wiki discovered a unique viewpoint if first starting with Total Launcher. The author is Steve Gibbs (steve-gibbs5). The section below was extracted from his article on the Instructables website “Interactive Smart Media Coffee Table” which involved the Total Launcher app. He had previously created an image which he used as a background and some “buttons” which could also be called “icons” to import. The “media table” is a combination of a television, tablet, and PC … interesting to read about, but his description of first encountering Total Launcher and guiding his readers is what this wiki is highlighting.
uiTLM has not been successful in contacting Steve. Hopefully he will drop by at some time and say “Hello”. Enjoy this approach in first interacting with with Total Launcher.
Below is the except from the article.
Prefer a bullet-point summary
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🔷 Total Launcher: Basic Custom Setup 🔷
… (O)pen Total Launcher. You are presented with a very basic launcher window which will have a few app widgets, a clock and a couple of others all on a blank black background. The basics of editing Total launcher are “long presses”, “dragging”, “copy & pasting”, “resizing” and single tapping a blank space to save your elements edit.
Long press a blank area of the screen to open the edit options. The main launcher window will shrink and you will see a “Menu” icon on the bottom left and an “Edit Off” icon on the right. The menu is where the launcher setting and backup options are. On the right, press the “Edit Off” icon then you will see it change to “Edit On” and also see a “New Page” option and 3 other icons under the launcher screen “Home” window, a trash can for deleting a window, an “Image” icon, and a cog icon for settings to the launcher windows. If you scroll across the screen, you will see other windows much like what you see when you have several screens full of apps on your phone or tablet’s default launcher. Tap in the middle of the window to make it full size again with the editor still On. Long press on one of the widgets and you will see it highlighted indicating it is in edit mode for this one element with a selection of editing icons. Tapping on a blank space on the window or tapping the Android navigation bars back button will exit the element edit and also saves any changes you made. For now, tap on the trash can in the top right corner then confirm to delete the widget. You’re only deleting it from the window, not from the app or system itself so you can use it again if you want. Do the same with all of the other elements to start with a clean slate.
Now we need to set the background image. Press and hold anywhere on the screen until the window shrinks down again. What we need is the “Image” icon below the window. Tap on this and you will see a portrait and landscape image. For the smart table we don’t really need the portrait option, so tap on the landscape image to open the image library page. This is where you add your pictures and GIF’s which for now is empty. Press on the plus icon, select where you saved your background picture (at this point it will be in Windows, so select “Import from Windows” on the Android Files app you will be on), tap on the picture and a copy is saved into your launcher library. Press on the picture again, then when you see the background setting page, select “Stretch to fit screen”, press okay, then press the window with your new background. You will now see your full size window with the new background. Now you’re ready to add elements to do things. Below are a few simple examples to try.
Tap on the + (plus) icon in the top right corner. Tap “graphic”. Tap “Text”. Now tap “Default” and you will now see a highlighted box with the word “Text”. Now tap on the cog (edit) icon, tap on “Text” now tap on “Date/time”. By default you will now see MMMM d,yyyy (month day, year). Tap on the end of yyyy which brings up your keyboard, then delete the lot. Now type in HH;mm, press the nav bar down arrow at the bottom of the screen, tap “OK” then tap the back button on the nav bar. You will now see a highlighted 24 hour clock. Try moving it around the screen by holding the clock and drag it to a black space on the window. Use the dots around the side of the clock element to make it larger or smaller, then tap a blank space on the screen or the nav back button to exit the element edit. Long press on the clock again, when it’s highlighted, tap on the cog icon again, tap on the text section again, then tap at the end of HH:mm then change the two upper case HH to lower case hh, tap the down arrow, then “OK” now go down to “Text color”, tap “color” and have a play around choosing a colour so the “OK” box changes to the colour you want. Tap “OK”, tap back and back again to exit the element editor. You will now see the clock in the colour you chose, but also now in the 12 hour format. Have a play around with the different options like changing typeface/font, alignment and the other choices to see what they do.
Now let’s make one of the background buttons work using the similar process as above, but simplified.
Tap on +, select graphic, Text, Default, then tap the cog icon, Text, now Plain text (which should already he selected by default). Tap the text field then write Play Store. Tap the down icon, OK, tap the “Capitalise all” box, tap back, and now tap the play icon to the left of the cog. Under “Tap” press on the “Action” field, the “Application”, now scroll down and tap Play store (depending on the app you may get a second selection pop up with different options). In this case, tap “Launch app”, then tap back, drag the text element to cover one of the background buttons, resize it to fit the button (Press the cog icon again if you need to change the font size to make it fit better), then exit the element edit. Press on the new button and the Google Play Store app should now open. In the clock example above, if you have a clock, alarm clock app installed, you can use the same process so when you tap the clock, the clock app opens.
Now let's try something a little different but making a website shortcut using a new button.
Tap + > Graphic > Image > Default > Image > + > go to where the new button image you made earlier is saved and tap on it > tap on the image in the image library > move it to an empty space and resize it > tap an empty space on the background. Now long press on the Play Store text element you made earlier, then tap on the “Copy” icon (to the left of the “Cut” scissors icon. Now tap + > Paste (which will past over the original you just copied) > drag it to cover the new button > tap the cog icon > then change “Play Store” to the website name you will choose. Save and back out of the element editor, use your search engine either via Android or Windows to go to your chosen website. Copy the URL (as were are doing this on a computer, you can use the CTRL = C shortcut to copy it), then go back to the launcher. Long press the text on the new button > play icon > Action > Launcher action > scroll to the bottom and tap “Open URL” > delete the HTTPS: > paste in the new URL (CTRL = V) > OK > back > back to exit the element editor. Now tap the new button and your chosen website should now open directly. The reason I used the “Play Store” copy and paste option was to 1: show you how it works, and 2: knowing this will help save time later in your project when adding a number of buttons, text fields etc. Copying/pasting multiple elements then editing them is a bit quicker that adding a new single element each time. As an example, if you had 3 working buttons in a row and you had a grid of 12 buttons to fill up. By long pressing one button to open the element editor, you can then tap on the other two buttons to select all three(all three will highlight), copy them, paste them, then move them to the empty positions then edit the pasted button to their new operations. You can then go on to select 6 buttons copy/paste/move them to their positions saving a lot of time. If you have sound files that you may have downloaded or made yourself (Audacity audio editor for PC is a great free tool to use to do this) can be saved in much the same way as using images, and like the launchers image library, there is a sound library as well where you can copy and save your sound files. When you press the play icon when editing your element where you add an action you will also see the Sound option. Pressing on this, selecting your sound then saving, backing out of the element editor, you can now press the element you assigned the sound to and you will now hear that sound every time it is tapped. … That’s the basics of Total Launcher, and there is so much more you can do. For example, instead of a button doing one thing, it can do 5 things by tapping as we know, but also swiping up, down, left and right. And if some of your apps have widgets, you can add them to your launcher too. I will give some more examples in the next step using Tasker, but to wrap this up for now, let’s back up out Total Launcher project and set it as a system default. Long press on a blank space on the launcher window, the tap the Menu icon. Select Backup center, tap + then tap New backup. You will see something like “backup_123456” in the title field, leave this as it is, but tap in front of the word “backup”. Here you can write anything you like so as an example we will name it “My New Table 01”. You cannot use spaces in between the words, so you need to use underscores so it will look like this… My_New_Table_01_backup_123456. When you have done this, tap OK, let it do it’s thing then you should get a “Backup successful” message. Now you can back out of the backup center. To set the launcher as your default launcher, tap the Menu icon then the Default option and choose Total Launcher as the launcher default. You can also do this in the android “Settings” then Apps > scroll to and tap Total Launcher > Advanced > Home App > then select Total Launcher. Have a good play with the launcher to find out what it can do, and make regular backups. If you mess anything up that you cannot fix or would take a lot of work, go to the backup center and choose the last good backup you made and carry on from there. …
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