What Are The Features Of The New 'Google Now Launcher' That That Replaced The Nexus 5 Launcher?

The old Nexus 5 launcher is gone, replaced by the "Google Now Launcher" that came following the Google Search update. The Google Search update app normally doesn't make such drastic changes so many users were taken by suprise when the update which normally only has little tweaks resulted in the Nexus 5 launchers name in the Settings->Home menu being changed to the "Google Now Launcher". 

The Google Search update for the Nexus 5 suggests that Google may be preparing to offically start rolling out the Google launcher with the next Android update. Right now we're at Android 4.4.2 KitKat so its possible that Google is giving Nexus 5 users early acess to some of the features that we can expect in whatever the next Android build is. It is worth noting that parts of the Nexus 5 launcher are contained in the Google Search app, which is how the update allowed Google to make that change.

It's' not clear if this change will bring any major changes just yet. The Google Search update did enable voice controls for UK English so that could be a sign of things to come for users outside of the US who had to use US English if they wanted to take advantage of Google Now voice commands. Not it seems that the Google Search update tweaks included that ability for the Nexus 5 to reogniz UK English. It's not clear if this feature will be extended to other languages or not.