Yahoo’s custom launcher Aviate adds Now-style ‘Smart Stream’

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 1 Jul 2015

Yahoo’s Aviate custom launcher now has its own digital assistant that will find restaurants, flights, or other details you may need throughout the day.

It’s called Smart Stream, anyone who’s dabbled with Now will find it rather familiar. The difference, of course, is that the new tool taps into Yahoo’s search engine. 

aviate smart screen Yahoo

Yahoo Aviate works very similarly to the Now uncher.

Yahoo says in a blog post introducing the feature that it will bring you restaurant recommendations, sports scores, or other suggestions based on your location time of day. In doing so, Yahoo has killed off Spaces, a feature of the previous version of Aviate that grouped together offered relevant applications based on similar parameters. Instead, Yahoo is now prodding you towards its own services, something that may not delight those who liked the previous Aviate organizational method. 

If you feel like giving the purple giant a prominent placement on your home screen, then grab it from the ay Store. If going that deep with Yahoo doesn’t sound appealing but you’d still like to play around with your home screen, then check out our guide to the best custom launchers.  

The story behind the story: Yahoo bought Aviate for $80 million in 2014 as a way to inject itself more deeply into Android. ’s operating system lets anyone create a custom launcher, which changes the overall look performance of the home screen. Since products services form a core part of Android, this is Yahoo’s best shot at snagging some search traffic precious data for its own services.