Xiaomi’s sub-brand POCO launched its own POCO Launcher last year with support for app drawer, now the company has started testing alpha version of its own MIUI launcher for its Mi and Redmi smartphones in China that will bring the app drawer. This will also finally bring app shortcuts allow users to launch any specific part of the app to perform certain key tasks, directly from home screen. This was originally introduced in Android Nougat.
You can enable or disable the app drawer from the launcher Settings after long press, you will get two options as seen in the image above. Swipe down to close the app tray doesn’t work currently, so you need to click on the down arrow at top, but you can use the back button. Also, there is no option to hide recent apps. These might be changed in the final version, since it is still in Alpha stage of testing.
You can test the launcher by installing the APK from here. This works only on devices running MIUI, unlike the POCO Launcher that works on all Android phones. We will let you know once these features arrive in MIUI Global ROM.