Up until now, customizing an Xperia launcher and lock screen has been quite the hassle, usually consisting of decompiling an APK, making your edits, and recompiling it. So if you wanted an extra row or column of icons on your home screen, you had to flash this, if you wanted fading home screen indicators, you had to flash this, and if you wanted to get rid of the app dock, you had to flash this, and so on. For every little change you wanted, there was an individual mod that you had to flash, and this can definitely become burdensome if you wished for a lot of changes.

This is probably why XDA Forum Member greg2001 developed an Xposed module to apply such aesthetic changes to the launcher and lock screen of the Sony Xperia Z. With it, one no longer has to create, find, and flash a plethora of incremental modifications to make their launcher and lock screen their own. Rather, XDA Recognized Developer rovo89's Xposed framework does all the work for you.

The full list of tweaks to the launcher and lock screen are as follows:

  • Launcher tweaks
    • Condensed font
    • Transparent status/navigation bars
    • Desktop grid size
    • Multi-line labels on desktop
    • Auto-hide page indicator on desktop
    • Folder columns
    • Multi-line labels in folders
    • Disable launcher background dimming when opening a folder
    • Dock columns
    • Hide dock stage
    • Hide dock reflections
    • Large dock reflections
    • Transparent drawer
    • Drawer grid size
    • Hide drawer backplate
  • Lock Screen tweaks
    • Transparent status bar
    • Enable the standard AOSP lockscreen with live wallpaper support, customizable via GravityBox
    • Hide shortcut icons
    • Hide unlock hint arrows
    • Custom/hidden unlock hint text
    • Custom/hidden carrier label
    • Small blinds

And because this is an Xposed mod, reverting back to previous settings is as simple as few taps and swipes, much more convenient than previously. It must be noted that the module will only work with an Xperia Z running the official Android 4.3 firmware.

If you would like to check this out, head over to the original thread for more information.