Integrating the most beloved universal search app

What is Sesame?

Sesame is a powerful universal search app especially beloved by Android power users. It offers contact search, web search and dozens of personalized shortcuts. We partnered with the lovely developers of Sesame to deeply integrate the app into Niagara Pro. The integration requires having installed Sesame, a freemium app with an unlimited free trial. You can download it on Google Play:

Download

You can try out Sesame’s integration right now, all you need is Niagara Launcher v0.30+, Niagara Pro and Sesame. If it’s not on Google Play (ETA: June 10) yet, download it from here:

Features

Our goal was to make Sesame like a native extension of Niagara Launcher. Sesame’s and Niagara Launchers interfaces are already similar due to the list-based layout, but we took it a step further and completely integrated Sesame into Niagara Launcher instead of just launching the app when you open search. Sesame mainly adds nifty features to Niagara’s app search, but with it you can also further customize Niagara Launcher’s app actions. Here are all of the new features:

Search

Compare Sesame’s additions to spotlight search on iOS. With Sesame integrated, Niagara Launchers displays dozens of Shortcuts as well as instant web results. You’ll also get suggestions based on recent searches before you have typed in anything.

You can also pin search results to the home screen with a long press. Additionally, swiping on Sesame’s contact shortcuts in app search reveals more actions, it will also possible to pin them soon:

Shortcuts

As you may already know swiping on an app reveals its shortcuts. However, Sesame also adds additional shortcuts here, to Google Play, Settings and Contacts and many more, but you can also create custom shortcuts.

Moreover, long pressing on any shortcut lets you pin it to the app list and home screen. You can even filter out shortcuts you don’t like to see in the swipe menu by taping the edit button on the top right and pressing on the edit Sesame shortcuts button.

Future Work

We’re planning on making it easier to access Sesame’s and Niagara’ search. Currently you can open search either from the all apps list or by pressing / swiping home. Because the latter is a bit finicky to trigger with the new gesture navigation enabled, we are experimenting with a replacement gesture. One idea is to adapt Apple’s vertical swipe gesture to open search. Because Niagara Launcher doesn’t have a conventional app drawer, the swipe up gesture is currently unused. We’re also working with the Sesame team to support Sesame’s new contact actions add-on and in-app search (Sesame calls this feature quick search):

Advanced contact actions in Sesame — may also be available in Niagara Launcher in the future.

Typing on one of these icons forwards the search term to the app you tapped on.

Feel free to share your thoughts about the integration 😊

Thank you for reading,

Peter