Split Screen Launcher: One of the few split-screen apps still working on Android 15, 16, and 17

1. Background: why "App Pair" matters on Android

Android has supported split-screen multitasking since version 7.0 (Nougat, 2016). What it has never supported at the OS level is saving combinations of two apps and launching them together. Samsung added this to One UI as "App Pair" back in 2017, and users who move from Galaxy to Pixel almost immediately notice it's gone.

The workaround is to install a third-party launcher that automates the two-step process: open app A, open app B into the adjacent window. Google Play lists dozens of these — but the ecosystem is messier than it looks, because each Android release changes how split-screen can be invoked, and most of these apps don't get updated.

Android 15 (2024) finally introduced a native App Pair feature at the OS level — but Google scoped it to large-screen devices only. Pixel Tablet got it; Pixel 9 Pro didn't. As of mid-2026, here's the lay of the land on phones:

• Samsung Galaxy phones — native App Pair since 2017 (via Edge Panel)
• Pixel phones (regular models, not Tablet or Fold) — none
• Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Vivo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, ASUS — none

So on phones, native App Pair is effectively a Samsung-only feature. Everyone else either uses Android's manual split-screen (open app, long-press recents, drag, repeat) or installs a third-party launcher like this one.

A Samsung App Pair alternative for Pixel and stock Android

If you've moved from a Galaxy phone to a Pixel — or to any stock-Android phone — and you're looking for a Samsung App Pair alternative, this is the gap we built Split Screen Launcher to fill. You get the same one-tap "launch both apps side-by-side" behavior, without needing a Samsung device or the Edge Panel.

It's also one of the few options that is still a split-screen app that works on Android 15, 16, and 17 — with no ads, no tracking SDKs, and no Accessibility permission on Android 12L and up. Most older app-pair tools lean on system shortcuts that recent Android releases closed off (we get into why in section 3 below); this one reaches split view through a path we've kept working across each OS update.

2. What Split Screen Launcher actually does

Split Screen Launcher is a single-purpose utility. You pick two apps, name the pair ("Commute", "Work", "YouTube + X"), and the pair shows up as a row in the app. Tapping it opens both apps side-by-side.

That's really the entire feature set. No built-in browser, no floating widgets, no notification panel integration. The app is lightweight — a few megabytes — and it doesn't run anything in the background.

Example pairs we used during testing:

• Google Maps + Spotify — driving
• YouTube + X (Twitter) — second-screen viewing
• Chrome + Google Keep — research with notes
• Gmail + Slack — work triage
• Calculator + Chrome — comparing prices across tabs

One use case we didn't anticipate: the car. A user told us they run Split Screen Launcher on the Android AI box in their vehicle, pairing Maps + Spotify for navigation with music — and switching to Maps + Netflix for whoever's in the passenger seat. Because launching a pair is a single tap, it suits a car head-unit far better than long-pressing through the recents menu.

One detail worth calling out because it's easy to miss: pair data exports to a backup file. That sounds trivial, but several competing apps in this category store their pairs in app-private storage with no export path — switching phones means rebuilding every pair by hand. We made the backup/restore a first-class feature precisely so a Pixel-to-Pixel migration restores the full set in seconds.

And another design choice worth flagging up front: by default, pairs live inside the app — no home-screen icons are created. The reason is partly to keep things simple (the home screen doesn't get cluttered with pair icons) and partly architectural — the app isn't tied to specific launchers (Pixel, Nova, etc.). As noted in section 3, shortcut-dependent launchers are exactly the kind that tend to break across Android 15 and 16 transitions; staying inside the app makes phone-to-phone migration smoother.

An optional pin-to-home action lets Pro users launch a pair with a single tap straight from the home screen. We wanted to keep the original "keep the home screen simple" posture intact while still answering the "I want to launch the split right from a home icon" need. The icon shown on home stacks the two app icons vertically, so the pair stays visually distinct from regular launcher icons.

Who this app is for (and who should skip it)

Before we dive into the technical side, here's a quick fit-check so you can decide whether the rest of this article is worth your time.

Still interested? The rest of this article covers the technical background — why Android 15 and 16 broke most of the alternatives, and the design decisions behind our approach.

3. The Android 15/16 problem — and why most competitors broke

This is the interesting part, and the reason most competing apps have stopped working.

Historically, split-screen launchers have relied on a handful of OS-level APIs that Google has gradually tightened or removed. Each new Android release has chipped away at the methods third-party apps use to launch two apps side-by-side. Android 15 and 16 in particular closed off the most common routes. Shell-level workarounds fail in similar ways.

In plain terms: the "tricks" third-party apps used to flip the phone into split mode don't work anymore on Android 15 and 16. Most apps in this category never shipped a fix.

Split Screen Launcher reaches split view reliably on Android 15, 16, and the new Android 17 via a different path. We're keeping the exact mechanism to ourselves — it took a fair amount of experimentation to find a combination that works across OS versions, and publishing the recipe would effectively be handing it to every broken competitor. What we can say is that our release history reflects active maintenance across the Android 12, 12L, 14, 15, 16, and 17 transitions, and we intend to keep that cadence going.

4. Permissions and privacy

On Android 12L and newer, launching a pair requires no runtime permissions and no Accessibility Service — the core split-screen flow uses standard Activity flags.

The one optional exception is per-pair auto-rotate. If you turn that on for a pair, the app requests the WRITE_SETTINGS special permission through the system Settings dialog at that point — it's never asked for up front, and you won't see it unless you use that feature.

On Android 9 through 12, the app does need Accessibility Service permission, because that's the only available API. The Play Store listing is explicit that the service is only used to trigger split-screen mode. The permission list shown by Google Play is short enough that you can read the whole thing on one screen — no location, no contacts, no storage, and (notably) no network. That's already unusual for this corner of the Play Store.

In plain terms: on older Android versions there was no official API for triggering split screen, so Accessibility Service was the only workable route. It's a legacy constraint, not something the app uses to read your screen.

For comparison, most free split-screen apps on the Play Store bundle ad SDKs (AdMob, Unity, IronSource), which means they ship with the INTERNET permission and the tracker bundle that comes with it. We chose to monetize via a minimal subscription instead — partly to keep the permission footprint clean, partly because bundling ad SDKs into a utility this small would balloon its size.

5. How we compare to other split-screen apps

Before the comparison itself, it's worth sketching the landscape. "App Pair"-style functionality has been approached from a few angles:

• OEM-specific implementations — Samsung's App Pair (since One UI, 2017), plus variants on Xiaomi, OPPO, and the old LG. These only work on that manufacturer's devices.
• Third-party utilities — standalone apps dedicated to this single use case. Most are built on OS-level APIs that have been narrowed or removed in recent Android versions, which is why the landscape has thinned out considerably.
• Automation-based approaches — Tasker and similar tools can script a split-launch, but they rely on the same underlying primitives as dedicated apps, so they inherit the same breakage. They also require users to build each pair manually.

The third-party landscape itself is fragmented. Google Play surfaces dozens of dedicated split-screen utilities, but activity and quality are unevenly distributed.

The most-downloaded apps in this niche have racked up millions of installs, yet the field's leaders are surprisingly weak: the biggest of them combines that large reach with a mediocre review score, and another widely-installed alternative was last updated in mid-2025 and still hasn't shipped a fix for the Android 15 / 16 split-screen API changes. Several others price aggressively, with steep weekly subscriptions that have drawn criticism in user communities.

The common patterns across this field: most apps either stopped updating around Android 11–12, ship with intrusive banner or interstitial ads, or require the Accessibility Service permission across all Android versions (we drop that requirement on Android 12L+). That makes the field unusually thin in terms of well-maintained, low-permission options.

A small, actively maintained, ad-free app like this one has an easy path to standing out — but only if users can find it.

6. Pricing

The free tier caps the number of saved pairs so users can try the full workflow before deciding whether it fits their habits. Core functionality — creating pairs, launching them, backup/restore — all works without paying.

The Pro subscription runs around $1 / month depending on region, removes the pair limit, and adds folder organization plus icon color customization. Standard Google Play subscription, cancel anytime.

For context: other paid split-screen utilities in the same category have premium tiers ranging from a one-time fee of a few dollars up to steep weekly subscriptions. At $1/month this is roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than the closest paid competitor.

7. Summary — who this is for

Install from Google Play