The sky — layout, regions & skies
What the sky is. The sky is your whole home screen — one open surface, with no pages to swipe and no fixed grid. This page covers how you can divide that surface, keep more than one of it, and fit it to your screen.
Regions — up to nine starting zones (Gold)
What they are. A region is a zone of the sky that holds its own set of stars — like a page or a category. You can split the sky into as many as nine regions, and each one remembers its own ring — the wheel of apps that blooms when you hold there.
Behavior. Where you hold decides which region's ring opens. Hold in the top-left zone and you get that region's apps; hold in another zone and you get its apps. Out of the box you have one region, so the whole sky opens the same ring. Two regions are free; more than two are (Gold).
Set the layout. Open Settings › regions & star index › edit region layout. This opens a full-screen editor with a live preview, headed "regions — drag a line to move it". Drag any divider line to move it — whole lines slide end to end, so regions never gap or overlap. A slider sets how many regions exist, from one to nine. Beside the count, the editor reads "up to 2 free, more with gold ✦"; without Gold, sliding past two snaps back and offers the upgrade. Tap "done ✦" to save, or "cancel" to discard.
Lowering the count deletes nothing. Lowering the count hides the regions past it, but they keep their stars. Raise the count again and they come back as they were.
See the borders. To learn the zones, turn on Settings › regions & star index › show region borders while holding — faint outlines appear while you hold so you can see where each region begins.
Multiple skies — separate setups you switch between (Gold)
What they are. A sky here means a whole separate setup — its own stars, its own regions, its own background. You can keep several and switch between them, so a "work" sky and a "home" sky need not share a thing.
Behavior. Switching skies saves the one you're leaving, then loads the other's stars and settings. Each sky keeps its own stars and its own look: list mode, regions, background and image dimming, theme, accent, star style, my sky (the live night-sky wallpaper, Gold), ring and star sizes, glows, sparks, trails, twinkle, and the clock, date and weather overlays. Some settings are the same on every sky: the hold delay, haptic feedback, the icon set, corners and edges, hidden apps, orientation, and the fold binding below. Open widget windows close when you switch.
Manage your skies. The skies section sits at the top of the settings sheet, above the page list. Tap a name to switch to it, ✎ to rename, ✕ to delete, or "＋ new sky" to make one. Creating a new sky is (Gold); you can't delete the sky you're on or your last remaining one.
Foldables — a sky per screen (Gold). On a folding phone you can bind one sky to the cover screen and another to the inner display, so they swap as you fold and unfold. This is (Gold), off by default, and set at Settings › system › fold — cover & inner as separate skies, with a "cover screen" and an "inner display" picker beneath it. Each offers "— keep —" and every sky. Leave one on "— keep —" and that screen keeps whatever sky is showing.
Fitting the sky to your screen
A bigger screen — magnify or expanse. On a wide screen, Settings › system › the wider sky decides what the extra room does. "magnify" (the default) scales the ring and stars up for a zoomed-in feel; "expanse" keeps them at phone size and turns the extra space into more canvas for wider layouts.
The choice shows on any foldable, and on any screen at least 600 dp wide. It only changes the sky while the screen is 840 dp wide or more — an unfolded inner display or a tablet. On a screen between 600 and 839 dp, the chips show but change nothing. On an ordinary phone the control is hidden.
Orientation. Settings › system › orientation locks the sky to "portrait" (the default), "landscape", or "rotate" — where "rotate" follows the phone as you turn it. A note under the choices reads: "the inside screen of a foldable always turns with the phone — android doesn't let an app keep it upright there."
Immersion mode. Settings › system › Immersion mode is off by default, so Android's status bar (the clock and battery icons at the top) and its gesture bar (the strip at the bottom) stay showing. Turn it on to hide both and give the sky the full screen. While they're hidden, a swipe in from the top or bottom edge shows them for a moment. Had "hide status bar" on before? Immersion mode is on for you.
See also.
The sky — your whole home screen · Stars, nodes & regions · Backgrounds & My Sky · I lost / can't find X