- If you're not gonna buy a Pixel 2,
but are still slightly feeling the sting of jealousy
at how clean the software looks
on the new devices sold by Google themselves,
here's a quick video on how to get all of that
stock lovely Google software, at least the look and feel
onto any Android phone, including those
new live wallpapers, which I personally am in love with.
Now, before we get started, we are gonna be
downloading apps that are not necessarily
in the Play Store, and by default, our phone blocks those.
So, to allow them, we're gonna head to settings,
and if you can, search for allow unknown sources,
otherwise just search through your settings for this.
It'll be somewhere for sure, it just
might be called another name.
A lot of times it's maybe under security,
someplace like that, once you find it though,
turn it on and we can continue.
First up, let's change the launcher.
The launcher, if you aren't familiar,
is an app, basically, that is just summoned
whenever you hit the home button on your phone
and that allows you to launch other apps from it.
Whether you are aware or not,
you are using a launcher right now,
most likely a customized version from your manufacturer
or if you're privy to them,
third party ones from the Play Store.
This is probably the single biggest change
you could make to the look and feel of your Android phone,
so let's start there.
To get the Pixel 2 home screen look,
you could go with the actual Google Now launcher
from the Pixel by downloading as an APK,
but since that isn't gonna work on all phones
and the Play Store version isn't updated
for the new Pixel 2 look, I found a simpler,
more widely compatible option.
Head to the Play Store and download Nova Launcher.
Don't worry, it's free.
Once downloaded, we're going to actually
join their Beta Program in order to get
some of the new features that they've
ported over from the Pixel 2 as customizable options.
To do that, we're gonna tap home
and select the Nova Launcher or tap always
and select the Nova Launcher,
depending on the phone you have,
and then it'll launch Nova from now on
when tapping the home button.
Don't worry, you can easily undo this
by installing it, by the way.
And then, we're gonna tap and hold the background
and tap the settings icon.
From there, scroll to the very bottom
and you'll see the Google Plus icon.
Tap that and make sure you're logged into the same account
that you use for Google on your device
and accept the Beta.
If you don't have a Google Plus account, by the way,
it'll make you create one really quickly.
You can then go back to the Nova settings
and tap on check for updates and tap that.
Then, tap the three dots at the top right
and select Beta from there.
Now, you could wait for the Beta to show up
automatically at this point as an update,
or you could tap the link there and then tap
the Beta download link on Nova's page to get it faster.
Once downloaded, tap on the download
in the notification shade and tap install.
We can then start customizing it to get the Pixel 2 look
by going back into settings, tapping on
app and widget drawers and turning on swipe to open.
Then, going to doc and tapping search bar in doc
and selecting under the doc.
Then, go to desktop in settings and tap on search bar style
and select the rounded one and the colored G logo
to match the Pixel 2's.
Also, we can go into look and feel
and turn on adaptive icons and tap on adaptive icon style
and set them to rounded, and also tap the toggle
to reshape legacy icons so that they all match.
After that, we can go to the home screen
and remove the app drawer icon,
since the Pixel 2 doesn't have that
and the search bar widget that's at the top
and we're pretty good to go.
Next, let's get the new calendar widget
from the Pixel launcher onto the Nova Beta one.
Simply head to the Play Store and search for
and install Another Widget, it's called.
Once installed, head to the homepage,
tap and hold on the background, tap widgets,
and select the new Another Widget calendar widget,
and place it onto the home screen.
It'll then bring you to a setup page.
In there, leave the default options,
but go to the bottom and tap the calendar option
to give it access to your events and then the weather option
to give it access to that as well.
Then, we can tap add widget and see how it looks.
Not bad, right?
One of my favorite, although more subtle updates
to the Pixel's look is the new living universe wallpapers.
To get those, we're gonna head to the Play Store
and download the Google Wallpapers app.
Now, these won't be available inside of it by default,
but we need it installed to actually get them.
So, next we're gonna head to this link here,
beneath this video, it'll take you to my site,
where you can then go to EXDA from the link there.
Make sure you do this in the phone's browser, by the way,
and then download the APK file listed in the first post.
Again, on the phone, to save the hassle
of having to get it to your phone from your computer
in a separate step.
Once downloaded, you can tap it and tap install.
After that, head to the Google Wallpapers app
and now you'll see a section for live wallpapers.
Tap that and you'll see the new Pixel ones in there.
Tap whichever one you want, tap set, and then
set it as either your home screen, lock screen, or both.
Now lastly, if you wanna really complete the look,
let's swap out the icons.
You can search for Pixel 2 icons in the Play Store
and there are a bunch of them.
Some are paid, most are paid, and some are free.
The free one that I used though that worked pretty well
is called Launcher Theme for Google Pixel 2.
Once you download an icon pack,
you can set them by tapping and holding
on the background of the home screen
and then tapping settings to get back into Nova settings
and then head to look and feel, tap icon theme,
and select the new icon pack in there
and it'll swap out all of the icons for the Pixel ones.
There you go, guys, any of this can be easily undone,
just by uninstalling those apps
from your settings applications.
So, worth trying it if you're interested.
But I hope you did like that.
If you did, please thumbs up, share it, subscribe,
all that fun stuff if you enjoyed this.
And, as always, regardless, thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)