This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
What a great advertisement for almost any other launcher.
Lawnchair is my go to if anyone wants a pretty simple and customizable launcher that respects your privacy.
I've tested several popular ones and landed at Lawnchair as well. Plus point for being FOSS.
I switched from Nova to Niagara a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it
Niagara is great, I don't miss pages with icons at all
there have been enough reasons to ditch nova in the past years, in case someone is still using it
I was still using it because I was too lazy to migrate things over to another.
And then I saw this post, so I guess it was time. Only took half an hour to figure out how to get Lawnchair doing basically what I wanted it to.
Octopi Launcher is damn near a replacement. Learn nothing new, muscle memory for swiping up or down on dock icons to open other apps.
Those were my requirements and it nails it.
Its a shame its not FOSS. Just checked it for trackers, and according to this site, there are none.
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.otp.octopilauncher/latest/
That was why I settled on Octopi
The one feature I use most of all on Nova is swipe down on the screen to search. I has that all the time and would be tough to give up. I also really like the ability to swipe up on a folder and have it launch the first app in the folder.
I'll give Octopi a try on an older phone and hopefully it has some of these same features.
Never heard of it but this thing looks fully featured and very polished. I'm surprised I haven't heard of it before since I've gone looking for decent launchers!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otp.octopilauncher
Switched to Octopi as well and had to configure it a little to get it setup but now I almost forget that I even switched
lawnchair is what I swapped to a few years back. I do want to warn.. be careful updating it. Always make a backup of lawnchair prior to allowing it to update because ive had it fail to update twice now and have had to restore the backup on the new version.
Yeah I switched to lawn chair a few months ago because I kept seeing these stories about Nova's parent company. I like it just fine—i haven't had the issues you have (thankfully)—but there are a few features I miss from nova. Oh well, I'd rather have the peace of mind than the minor feature.
Or it just keeps breaking and not reading my files.
Oh I am confusing this for Nova Video player.
Damn I was excited to switch to this Lawnchair everyone is so indifferent about.
Used Nova for close to ten years. Switched last year to Kvaesitso.
I recommend everyone still using Nova to look into options and switch. It's not as scary as it seems.
Excellent. Lawnchair it is then.
I don't hate Lawnchair. I just hate Nova making the switch necessary.
Niagara is good as well.
Also spyware.
Just turn off network sharing if you have something like Graphene OS
Well yeah that’s the only way but then you lose the meteorology API which is a shame.
It sucks because Niagara is easily my favourite launcher, but I can’t afford to have a proprietary app with insane privileges across my device.
Sauce?
How so?
Requires network connection and is closed source.
Fuck all this. Stock android degoogled/Lineageos should be standard for every phone.
Next phone I get will be 100% degoogled. Hopefully a full Linux distro is out by then. I wish there was a Linux distro for phones that was just the regular OS but with adaptive standards like how websites change with desktop and mobile and Windows size changes.
Check out Swappa.com, find an unlocked Google Pixel 7a or 8a, and load GrapheneOS onto it.
Out of interest as a 7a user , what's the top 3 pros and cons ?
I use Minimalist Phone Launcher with network access disabled. I know there are libre alternatives out there, but I didn't like them as much, and I desperately needed a digital detox.
I switched from Nova to Total Launcher a while back and it's been great. It has all the customization features I liked from Nova, plus additional useful features like folder swipe actions that Nova never had
Not just folders, every icon has 4-way configurable swipe. I've gone a little swipe crazy now. Who needs folders when you can launch 5 different things by swiping a single icon...
Meh, I'll just keep not updating my 2024 version that I already paid for years ago and works perfectly fine lol
Me too. Only bummer is that the weather widget in the search bar keeps crashing. Other than that, I have no issue staying on my current version.
You could also try Yagni launcher on fdroid. 2mb, still in alpha, but very much worth installing.
I have been a happy camper switching from OLauncherCF to Fokkus Launcher, author was very receptive to feedback and updated quickly, recommend 10/10
Which one exactly? There seem to be at least five different ones...
Wasn't nova launcher basically shut down not even 2 years ago.
Last I knew they fired everyone but 1 dev, then that dev said "yea fuck this im out" and left as well.
Ugh. I've been holding out until now.
I've tried a ton of others but the only one I even half like is Lawnchair. The others are too restricted, too annoying or too creepy.
Does anyone know how to replicate the custom groups/tabs of apps inside the app drawer?
The app drawer and ability to choose my own search engine are what keeps me on it. I don't want "smart" anything, just let me control it.
Nova was so customizable. I used those same group, tab features a lot over the years. Categories like: Network, Games, PIM, Storage, Images, Comms, etc, can take a lot of clutter out of your main drawer, not to mention Nova let you customize the visuals to a extensive point.
I remember using one called Apex around the days of early Nova and the two of them would swap who was in the lead and who was the better launcher. I haven't found an open source launcher that gives me what I want.
Ah man, I forgot about apex
Octopi Launcher. Until I found this I was ignoring all the red flags with Nova.
Found this, ran away from Nova.
Never heard of it?
It was by far the best launcher on Android until it was bought by an ad company.
And it was so by a huge margin. It had features and customizability unmatched to this day afaik
Yes, and requests for those features get ignored in the competitors' forums.
Sub-tile icon/widget placement, I'm looking at you!
