For today’s Tuesday Tweak, we’re focusing our attention on a very flexible third-party launcher named Apex, which incidentally recently passed the five million installations milestone. This application supplies its users with the ability to completely alter the appearance of the software on their device and is available to download on any smartphone or tablet running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher.

The main purpose of Apex Launcher is to provide users with a completely stock, native, Android experience, even if manufacturers, such as Samsung, have installed their own custom user interface on top like TouchWiz, for example. With this app users also have the facility to completely alter the structure and look of their home screen.

Apex Launcher offers a fully customizable homescreen grid with a limit of up to 9 pages, in addition to a scrollable dock with up to 7 icons per page and up to 5 pages. When users scroll through their homescreen, application drawer and dock, they will notice that all transitions are completely seamless and appear to live up to Google’s “smooth as butter” motto.

However, If you’re not keen on the standard Android transitions, you have the option to select a fancy new changeover effect from Apex’s built-in bundle, which includes Cube In, Cube Out and Card Stack. It’s important to ensure that your device has enough RAM to cope with these new transitions, though, otherwise you may notice some lag when scrolling between pages. Anything over 1GB should suffice.

Like most other launchers on the market, Apex comes with an “advanced theme engine”, which means that users will be able to download and install a variety of different third-party icon packs and skins — all of which can be found on the Google Play Store. Simply search for “Apex Launcher Skins” and you will be presented with a full list of compatible items. Installing them is super easy, too. Just hit the download button, head into Apex’s settings, tap on Display and select the overlay you wish to use.

Apex also provides its users with the facility to differentiate between many different application drawer styles ranging from transparent to opaque and from paginated to continuous. An application drawer, for those unaware, is the menu that appears containing all your installed applications when you click the Apps button on your smartphone or tablet.

Best of all, Apex is optimized for both Android-powered smartphones and tablets; so users won’t find themselves facing any fragmentation issues when they install and activate the launcher. Apex is completely free to download, however, a paid version is available, which entitles users to more powerful drawer customizations and unread count notifications, but, hey, it’s good to support developers every once in a while. So if you like the sound of this particular launcher — click the link below to download and install it directly on your device.

• Google Play StoreApex Launcher