OnePlus Finds Way to Keep Its Shelf Alive on OnePlus 8

One of the first things I noticed after booting up my OnePlus 8 Pro review unit for the first time was the missing OnePlus Shelf, which had been replaced with Google’s Discover panel. As someone who has never adopted the Shelf because it seemed like an extra area of a phone to maintain, I fully approved of the change and never thought about the Shelf again. With an announcement today, it’s clear that some OnePlus 8 owners miss it.

OnePlus took to its forums today to announce that an update to the OnePlus Launcher (v4.5.4) on OnePlus 8 phones will bring back the Shelf, just not in the way it was implemented on older phones. Now, if you want the Shelf, you’ll be able to access it with a swipe down action on the home screen.

Confused at how that might work with Android’s notification pulldown? Since I don’t have the update, I’m guessing a bit here, but it looks like this Shelf swipe-down simply replaces the home screen setting that previously let you swipe down anywhere on the screen to bring down notifications. In other words, you should still be able to reach all of the way to the status bar and swipe down to get notifications, it’s just that swiping lower on the screen will bring down the Shelf. That make sense?

Anyone enabling this?

// OnePlus