If you are one of the people who like to have the Poco launcher on your mobile, even if your model is not precisely of this brand, this will be bad news for you, since this launcher can no longer be installed on any mobile.
If you have it installed, you won’t have any problems, at least for now, while if you haven’t installed it, you may find yourself with the unpleasant news that you won’t be able to do it. At the moment this does not happen on all mobiles, so we will tell you what is currently happening while waiting for more information about this well-known application launcher.
What is POCO Launcher?
POCO Launcher is one of the most successful Android applications a few years ago, an application launcher characterized by being fast and light , available for Android devices. It has an attractive design and high performance to customize your device to your liking. There are themes, animations, wallpapers for the home screen and much more. But without a doubt you will notice the agility with which it works from the first moment.
With it, you will have all your apps in the App Drawer with a clean and clear screen. As if that were not enough, it has dark mode. In addition, you will be able to change the design size of this and the icons, among many other possibilities.
Until now it was available in the Android app store, but this could change soon. It currently requires Android 8 to 11 and has been updated in April of this year.
It disappears from the Play Store on many mobiles
The POCO Launcher , first seen on the Pocophone F1 and later made available to all users on the Google App Store, is no longer available or downloadable on the Play Store. Yes, other Xiaomi applications will be available, at least for now, that you can download in the Google app store such as Calendar, Calculator, File Manager and many others.
If you enter the Google application store, Play Store, and you don’t find the POCO Launcher, it means that it has disappeared. This is not an error, but Xiaomi has decided to make it disappear . Specifically, they claim to have discontinued support for Launcher POCO (Google Play Edition) on April 1.
The specific message is: “We are discontinuing support for POCO Launcher (Google Play Edition) on April 1, 2022. The current version of POCO Launcher is compatible with devices running Android 11 (Android R) or earlier. It appears that a later version of Android is running on your device. To avoid errors, please switch to another launcher.”
Only available on Android 11 or earlier
The point is that, as can be seen in the message, Launcher POCO is still available in the Play Store app store, but only for smartphones with Android 11 or earlier. We do not yet know what the reasons are, since some Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO models have received the update to Android 12.
It seems that the objective could be to limit the spread of the app so that soon this app launcher will only be available on POCO smartphones. Informant Kacper Skrzypek assures that the reason is due to the development of the launcher, which for some years has taken a different turn than previously assumed. In principle, it was an alternative to MIUI with a greater number of customizations, while now it would be possible for it to merge with the MIUI that it wanted to replace. And the story may have taken a new turn.
With some products, there has been talk of a MIUI-based custom launcher instead of POCO Launcher. There were even rumors of a POCO UI instead of MIUI, but the project never came to fruition. The same POCO sub-brand recently spoke about the contentious relationship with MIUI.
If you open the Play Store and find that you can’t install POCO Launcher, the only alternative, at least for now, is to download the APK file and see if it works for you. You can find it here . If you still find it and want to have it, take the opportunity to get hold of it.