Nova Launcher was acquired by analytics firm Branch Metrics in 2022 . Barry initially stayed on to continue development, but the situation deteriorated. After being the sole developer for the past year, Barry announced he had left Branch and was no longer involved with Nova Launcher . The Broken Promises: Branch’s then-CEO and founder Alex Austin made public commitments to the community about open-sourcing the code if Barry ever left . However, Barry was ultimately asked to stop working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing effort he had been preparing . The Irony: Nova Launcher is now owned by Swedish company Instabridge and already contains code for Facebook Ads and Google AdMob trackers, with ads being integrated into the app . This is exactly the kind of enshitification that the community feared when an analytics company acquired it in the first place. In Barry’s actual statement, he was more restrained—just expressing that he was grateful for the community’s support while confirming he’d left. But the community response on Reddit and elsewhere absolutely used the word “enshitification” to describe what happened to their beloved launcher.
Pure fucking bullshit.
Fossify Launcher works well, that’s what I switched to.
I blocked the app from updating itself.
this last week i finally bit the bullet and switched my default launcher to smart launcher once they finally got infinite scrolling working.
i think 2 days later nova updated to this latest version. i’m not going to see ads since i paid for it more than a decade ago. but that fb tracking (that i was not made aware of) i really don’t like.
i hope nova gets open sourced soon.
I’ve been using lawnchair (which is a great substitute) ever since the news of the buyout from an ad company was announced, but that was a long time ago… Not sure why this is coming up now.
Anyway, a few days back I found out a new launcher and I want to spread the love for it. It requires more effort to configure it at first but I’m really liking its UX and the simplicity of the screen. It is called dragon launcher and I am having a nice time making small incremental changes to personalize it more and more and has been working great for me: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.elnix.dragonlauncher
I just switched to Lawnchair recently, and I really like it. I’ll definitely give Dragon a look.
Glad I read the writing on the wall and switched a few months ago
Onec again the “Everything that’s not FOSS will turn to shit at one point or another” theorem proves true.
Yeah but foss has its own problems. Mainly financing. People are expected to work for free on most open source projects, and some do because they enjoy it. I do that myself too. Its fun.
But foss doesnt create products that require a lot of funding to get off the ground.
There is something to be said about continuous community effort. Projects tend to continue even with original developers absent, sometimes for a very long time.
One of my favourite games is STALKER, and boy does it hold a story and history behind the community. The eurojank game that was modded into an AAA looking survival game that was even published to GOG (STALKER GAMMA). Such project could’ve probably costed millions for a studio. Coincidentally, watched this video today, which briefly tells the history too: https://youtu.be/5C80TWlTC1o
And if a FOSS project turns into shit a fork will come up.
One perfect example was simple apps acquisition. New owners turned it a ad ridden mess, fossify apps fork came to the rescue.
I recommend Kvaesitso, very snappy with lots of functionality.
Am I just not seeing it or do they not seem to allow icons on the desktop?
they do? you go to the settings, home screens, and increase the dock rows.
That’s my second favorite after Smart Launcher
Fuck. I bought this forever ago, either for my Droid 2 or my Galaxy S3. Skipped it on my first Pixel and came back on the Pixel 7.
Haven’t really heard any talk about it, didn’t know about the owner/dev drama until seeing some comments here.
Haven’t noticed any ads myself yet, but maybe that’s a “coming soon” thing.
Time to go launcher shopping again. This thread mentioned Lawnchair and Niagara, so I’ll check those out first.
I bought it back then in the Android… 2.x or 4.x days as the launcher on my phone sucked. Hadn’t much complaints about the stock launchers of my next few phones and forgot about it until I got a Pixel. Wow, the pixel launcher was a complete letdown. Especially the forced unremovable search bar that’s completely useless for me and takes up so much real estate on the screen. Then I couldn’t remove the at a glance widget either (IIRC a big back then, but… Yeah…). I get it, that it’s nice, but… Again: Too much real estate for a clock, a totally unreliable weather info (at least in my area?) and info about the currently playing song.
Searched launchers, remembered Nova and was surprised it was still around and had all the features I wanted. Bonus: it allows me to resize widgets.
I tried Octopi, when the owner change news for Nova hit, but was so used to having folders on the dock from my previous phones and Nova, that I couldn’t use it without that feature. So I tried lawnchair which is basically the pixel launcher but with exactly the features I missed in the original. I can get rid of spotlight and can get rid of the search bar. Widgets are resizable. Also the dock features folders. And I can control the grid size and adjust it to my liking.
Niagara was also recommended to me, but… IIRC in the end it felt to opinionated about the workflow and immediately lost me. Not what I’m looking for in a launcher. (Not saying it’s bad - just that it’s not for me).
I was a longtime nova user. Switched to octopi launcher. It has all my favorite features from nova.
I’m using Niagara in the free tier and I’m very happy with it. it’s snappy and good looking and I spend so little time hunting through my apps for the ones I need thanks to the favorites section on the home screen. good stuff
But I don’t wanna redesign my nice app tray and home screen. Can I just never update it?
That’s my plan…
This used to be my favorite piece of software I paid for. Then… 💩
i like lawnchair launcher :3
They got a new owner years ago. No one should still be using it. Lawnchair has been great for me.
I ducked off the Nova train with their fishy new owners a few months ago. My one complaint about Lawnchair is that the search function is slower and less effective, otherwise it’s great!
If anyone is looking to try something new - I really enjoyed
WaterfallNiagra after dropping Nova.+1 for Niagra. It takes a few days to get used to but it’s the launcher every power user didn’t know they wanted. Lifetime purchase options and a very responsive/passionate dev
Seconded. Looks good and I’ve found browsing by letter is way faster than the traditional folders (although you can still use folders with premium). I bought the upgrade after a few months.
Made the switch last year. Have had no issues,especially now that you can do folders.
Thats why you want open source software, its the only software you can trust, its the only software that won’t fuck you over
Until these mfs relicense their sht and we have to fork
at least forking is an option you can choose, and someone else with decent reputation in the foss community will probably also do it before you, instead of just accepting being fucked up the ass with no lube for the third time this week
Except when it goes from open source to closed lol
At which point it simply gets forked from the last release/commit. Unless the project nukes all of the history and no one comes forward with a backup.
And, they would typically need the consent of every contributor to legally change the license, unless they had been forcing contributors to sign over rights to their code before contribution.
Thanks for this post, I quickly turned off auto-updates 👀
I only started using it half a year ago, but it was still the best from all the launchers I’ve tried 😔
