POC - Combining BW Clock and Desktop Launcher to spend less time "Loading..."

Yes, from my own tests not entirely managing to mitigate buildup in RAM

If we actually know it doesn't unload completely and will cause instability eventually, I'm a bit unsure about it even being in the default Icon Launcher behind an option. Of course if you want to do it in your own copy of the app loader then that's great - but I'd much rather that anyone interested tries it out there knowing what they're letting themselves in for, than a normal user turns the option on without really understanding what the implications are (if you see an option titled 'fast launch' you're probably going to turn it on).

Personally, I feel like there are a few other ways to improve experience, like switching to using the on-chip flash memory access hardware (currently we just use software). I'd much rather get stuff like that done and improve performance across the board than spending time trying to work around it.

should the unloading function of apps be exported and be accessible by other apps? This way e.g. Quick Launcher or Pattern Launcher could utilize/facilitate faster app switching as well?

The issue here is it's not just clock -> launcher -> app but maybe clock -> launcher -> app -> app -> app -> app -> etc and so any leaks will really add up.

These kind of things would work great in a controlled environment, but Bangle.js App Loader is anything but a controlled environment. Code quality of apps on average isn't great as-is, and I honestly don't ever see a point where we could happily say that every app will clean up after itself.

... and even if we tagged apps that did clean up after themselves, I think it's unlikely that each contribution to an app in the future would be checked to see that it didn't leave memory behind.