Summary
- PixelShot: AI auto-categorizes and tags screenshots, a strong Pixel Screenshots alternative.
- Shazam: ID songs in seconds and use Auto Shazam to emulate Now Playing.
- Lawnchair 15 and Material You Widgets bring a customizable Pixel-like launcher and hundreds of Material 3 widgets.
Within the Android world, Google’s Pixel smartphones are known for three things in particular: their stellar computational photography-powered camera stack, their grab bag of useful AI features, and the slick, refined software experience they provide out of the box.
Other non-Pixel Android phones, including those from Samsung, OnePlus, and Motorola, offer their own unique take on software, but, in my eyes, there’s something particularly pleasant about the Pixel’s potent mix of AI and UI that other phone makers haven’t quite captured to the same degree.
It’s actually possible to port over much of the Pixel experience to non-Google-branded Android phones, but it requires a fair bit of elbow grease. Pixel app APK files can be downloaded from the web, but it can be hit-or-miss whether they will function on any given third-party phone or OS variation.
…even without jumping through hoops, it’s possible to Pixelify your Galaxy, Moto, or other Android phone using mainstream apps.
Pixel-esque custom ROMs can be flashed on handsets with an unlocked bootloader, but this requires some additional know-how, and it isn’t for the faint of heart. Other solutions require rooting a handset and making use of software solutions like Shizuku, which are time-consuming projects in their own right.
Thankfully, even without jumping through hoops, it’s possible to Pixelify your Galaxy, Moto, or any other Android phone using mainstream apps with a user-friendly design. Here are four apps I personally use to inject some Pixel-inspired AI jazz and UI pleasantry into my phone experience.
1
PixelShot
The best Pixel Screenshots alternative
Launching alongside the Pixel 9 series in 2024, the Pixel Screenshots app serves as a one-stop-shop for accessing all the screen captures you’ve taken on your phone. Aside from being a convenient vault for accessing your saved images, the app uses on-device AI to categorize, tag, and extract relevant data from them. Once analyzed, you can search for content within any of your screenshots, or hop back into the app or web page the screenshot originated from.
While there are other solutions on the market, the third-party PixelShot app is my personal favorite. It functions nearly identical to Google’s own Pixel Screenshots app, and it provides a clean Material 3 Expressive design that looks and feels very “Pixel.” The app uses on-device intelligence to process your captures, with no data being sent to the cloud. A paid Pro tier is available for users wanting in-the-background analysis and several other perks, but the free version is more than capable for most use cases.
2
Shazam
Auto Shazam is the simplest way to emulate the Now Playing experience
Now Playing is arguably my very favorite feature found on modern Google Pixel phones. The tool works silently in the background, identifying and surfacing details of the songs that play ambiently during your day-to-day life. It works just like Shazam, but in the background, and even without an active internet connection.
Speaking of Shazam, the Apple-owned music identification app is a surprisingly viable Now Playing alternative for non-Pixel phones. Within the app’s main Settings page, an Auto Shazam option can be toggled on, which can work in the background to continuously detect and identify music in your environment. No, it’s not quite as well-integrated into the system as Google’s first-party solution is, but it’s a perfectly serviceable solution that doesn’t require any fiddling in order to set up. Plus, it’s entirely free.
3
Lawnchair 15
A souped-up take on the Pixel Launcher experience
Third-party home screen launchers might not be as all-encompassing as full-blown custom Android ROMs, but they achieve much of the same effect while being easier to install and set up. A number of launcher apps are available that offer a clean Pixel UI-inspired interface, but my personal favorite is Lawnchair. Now in its version 15 release, Lawnchair’s M.O. is to provide the user with a clean Android experience that follows Google’s own design vision, while sprinkling in several useful features and customization options that the Pixel Launcher simply lacks. Lawnchair is free to download and install, and its code base is open-source and available on GitHub.
Launchair 15 provides in-depth customization options including control over font style, weight, and color, icon shapes, app closing animations, a wallpaper depth effect, a double-tap on the home screen gesture, app dock behavior, app drawer organization, folder presentation, and countless other useful additions that build upon the simplicity of Google’s basic Pixel Launcher.
Hundreds of expressive widgets that perfectly complement the Pixel aesthetic
If you’re looking to truly embrace the Pixel look and feel on your non-Google Android phone, then consider downloading the third-party Material You widgets app from the Play Store. For a single-time purchase of just a couple of dollars, the app unlocks access to hundreds of high-quality widgets that embrace Google’s latest Material 3 Expressive design ethos to a tee. These widgets are flexible and responsive with dynamic resizing, they adhere to the system’s light and dark mode toggle, and they tap into Google’s color theming engine that changes based on wallpaper of choice.
Widget options found within the Material You Widgets app include system toggles, clocks, calendars, weather conditions, music playback controls, contact cards, battery indicators, the current moonphase, a pedometer, a compass, daily quotes, games like Tic Tac Toe and Snake, screentime metrics, and much, much more.
