Originally Posted by
6thSense I'm a S6 noob. Prior to this I had a Motorola Photon 4G that I rooted and tweaked like crazy just to get it to work the way I needed. What is this Nova Launcher? I downloaded it last week because I read somewhere it was needed to update a theme or something. But I guess I really don't understand the concept of these launchers and what all they do. Is there a tut thread somewhere? Or can somebody give me the cliffs notes version?
Nova launcher is just a launcher that gives you some flexibility in the look of the main UI. For example, you can change grid sizes, change the icons by installing icon packs, change margins, change different effects, etc. I use Nova for its features and I love it, but there are plenty of users on here that don't use any 3rd party launcher so Nova is by no means necessary.
The S6 does allow for themes, but these are themes directly from Samsung. Themes will change your UI, icons, color scheme, and wallpapers all in one. You can change your wallpapers again, but the other settings are an all or nothing. You can download more themes through the main phone settings screen. You will see an option for themes. When you get to that setting, you will see themes already installed and you can access the store (top right of the screen) and download more themes.
Note that you can combine the use of Samsung themes with a third party launcher. I'm using the Black Widow theme from Samsung with Nova launcher and the Stealth icon pack.