Nova Launcher — one of the most popular third-party launchers for Android — has received a major new update in its beta channel today. The update brings the full Material Design treatment to the app with the launcher being rebased on Launcher3 — the AOSP launcher of Android 5.0.

Besides Material Design, the launcher also includes more animations, some brand new icons, and support for Android for Work. The beta includes quite a bunch of new features as well, including unlimited homescreen pages, Widget search, the option to remove the tab on the App Drawer, separate drawer for widgets, and pull to search in app drawer. (www.ebsta.com)

Additionally, the launcher will now display a live preview of any adjustment made by users to the grid size, icon size or to the dock.

The full changelog of the update is below:

• Full Material Design- All settings screens and dialogs are material style- More animations- Google Search from the search bar shows as an overlay- Edit Shortcut dialog, and quick menu, tinted based on colors of the icon- New icon- New Nova Action icons

• Rebased on top of Launcher3

• Individual icon layout settings (size, font, etc) in Desktop, Drawer, Dock, Folder

• Max icon size boosted to 150%

• Widget Search

• Pull to search (pull down in the drawer to open app or widget search)

• Widgets given their own drawer, removed from App Drawer

• Ability to change Page Indicator color

• Drawer Tab Bar completely optional

• Support for Android for Work managed profiles (Lollipop)

• Unlimited desktop pages (previously limited to 9)

• Easy add/remove of desktop pages by dropping icons on the blank page, or removing all icons from a page

• Add blank desktop pages (for gestures or live wallpapers) from overview

• Added shadows to unread badges

• Allow reordering drawer folders by drag/drop within window

• Added Roboto-Medium font option

• Improve handling of apps installed to sdcard

You can download the APK of the latest beta from here or alternatively join the Nova Launcher community on Google+ and then download the app from here.