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I may be kinda weird. My phone has looked the same for probably 10 years or more. The home screen is a wallpaper but otherwise blank. My name is at the bottom in the dock area, six letters, like M Y N A M E. When I tap a letter it opens a certain app or folder of apps. When I swipe up it opens others. For example, tap the M and it opens the camera, swipe up and it opens a folder of photo apps. Same for all six letters. I have one other page with active widgets for info I can take in visually like weather radar, news ticker, etc but on my main page, with those 6 taps and swipes I can open anything in a couple seconds max, one handed, probably with my eyes closed for oft-used apps.
The letters of my name are 6 different images, I just typed my name in a nice looking font, took a snapshot of each letter and made the background transparent. So to set it up I drag the camera app to the dock then change it's icon to the M.gif I have saved on my sdcard, then set a swipe action to open the photo apps folder. Really simple.. as long as the launcher has those options.
Since I read this post I've been looking at other launchers. I could find no way to get rid of the search bar in the dock with one launcher, another one didn't even have a dock, it had a vertical A-Z on the side so you could open a list of apps alphabetically. Lawnchair won't let me choose my own images for the icons in the dock, I can only select system icons or an icon pack.
I'll keep looking, and maybe I can make my 6 gif into an icon pack to use with Lawnchair or something. But without those options I will have to start using my phone in a completely different way than I have been using it for over 10 years.
To the best of my knowledge, Pear Launcher can do everything you're asking for. I haven't used nova in a while, but from what I recall of it, the free version of pear launcher is far more feature rich than nova.
Thanks! I downloaded it and it can change icons to images and swipes work fine. I just need to figure out how to do folders. It only says "folders in app drawer" in the description, I need folders to open with a tap or swipe on a home screen icon. I still have a copy of Folder Organizer although it's been abandoned for years. I could get them to work with that if nothing else.
Hey, dunno if you figured it out yet, but creating folders is done in the pear launcher settings (I get to the settings by a "pear actions" widget set to pear settings). From there, it's app drawer > folders > then you can make new folders and add stuff to them.