Branch Metrics sucks. They fired almost of all people working for Nova.
Bad news.
Still waiting for https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/releases to get out of beta
It’s pretty much already very usable. I have been on version 12 alpha for a long time and now on 14 beta 2, all in all since nearly a year.
Seems like it is missing a lot of the conveniences that I was once used to with Nova, though. No ability to reposition the search bar or keep it in place on other pages, no docked apps, no button to open the app drawer, the home screen grid has fixed padding and so on.
I’ve since switched to Niagara which has been okay, but I’ve never found anything else like Nova since.
I’ve had it freeze up on me several times, where I had to reset the app to get it working again. It works most of the time, but I wouldn’t recommend it yet for general use.
Fun fact: the original Lawnchair’s founding developer is the TSA nofly list hacker
Dont go selling me harder on it.
I mean it is a fine launcher. Personally I use Pie Launcher cause I’m a bit insane. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher/
Lol development on it halts and resumes almost randomly, I’ve given up hope long ago.
Which really sucks as it’s the only launcher to have QuickSwitch support AFAIK.Development has been steady. 8 beta has been available with about monthly updates for a few years or some such, in official Nova Discord.
They launched the beta in play store recently as well. Been using the beta since they shared the first apk.
I’ve been using the 14 nightlies for months now, 0 issues. It’s very nice and responsive.
Wait it’s in Beta? I’ve been using it for like over a year
TotalLauncher has been a great replacement for me. Jumped ship a number of months ago
Meh. Nova is the best launcher in my opinion but I’ve already been version locked to the last release before this company bought it. I’ve basically given up in anyone else replicating the features I want. So I’ll be using this version of Nova until Google finally breaks it.
Same! I refuse to update it and got a little annoyed at a post I saw where the dev (at least I think it was him) said “hey it’s 1 year later and the world hasn’t exploded”. Found that a little annoying.
Let’s hope he gets control of the app back and can do nova again, without this shit baked in.
Edit: guess I should have RTFA first. Gross
What version are you on? I’m on 7.0.58.
7.0.57. I’ve had no android issues with this version. I don’t feel like I’m missing any features by refusing to update.
weird. who could have predicted a rug pull from an analytics and spyware company… lol.
if you get in bed with adtech vipers and don’t anticipate problems, you’re gullible as hell. if you don’t stop them (or worse, if you let them) ad people will sell you, your soul, and your passion to the devil for a single penny.
What is the best replacement? I’ll hold on to Nova as long as possible, but if for some reason they screw it in some way…
LawnChair is the best option I’ve tried that has a similar design to Nova.
I’ve tried at least a couple dozen launchers since Nova got bought. Most of them are either half-baked or have a very different design (e.g. based on radial menus or text-only lists). If you’re into minimalism, there are a lot of good options. If you want a full-featured icon grid that behaves more or less like Nova, LawnChair is it.
I’m running LawnChair 14 Beta now. You can get it off the GitHub. Last I checked, the version on Google Play was very old.
Does the new beta have the same features as the old one yet? Last time I tried it, I couldn’t get it to work quite the same way.
Do you remember which features specifically were missing? It might be something I haven’t used. For me it was a pretty straightforward upgrade from version 12.
The only problem I ran into was that adding widgets was a little funky when changing the grid size. I think I had to add the widgets before changing the grid size (I use a 5x10 grid) or they didn’t align correctly. I encountered similar problems with many of the launchers I tried.
The folders in drawers are something I miss from the previous version. I can live without it, but that would be nice
Ah, I don’t see a way to do that. Not sure how it used to work.
Kvaesitso has risen to the top as my favorite launcher after trying a ton of launchers.
I don’t understand why someone would want a “search-focused” launcher. You mean I have to bring up the on-screen keyboard and type out the name of an app instead of just scrolling & tapping an icon with 1-2 simple motions? Yuck. What am I missing?
I too would be put off if it had to be used that way. But it can be used as a regular icon tapping launcher - it has a regular app drawer - which is how i use it. I don’t think it should market itself as a “search-focused” launcher.
If you have 100+ apps you’re going to need either a ton of organization or a search tool. Some people will meticulously organize their apps into folders, while others go for the search
Same here and I don’t even use the search that much. Love it
I’ve been using Neo Launcher for a while, no complaints
I’ve also been using it for a while but I do have complaints. They introduced a few minor bugs when it went from omega to neo and despite them being reported over a year ago they’ve not made any fixes since. I use it because it’s alright and not spying on me, but I’m always on the lookout for an improvement.
I’m pretty happy with total launcher in combination with app search since I didn’t like totals app drawer.
Edit: I just found OpenLauncher and I’m going to test that out.
I use total launcher also.
It’s cumbersome. It’s pain in the ass. But it works great with my pixel fold. I love it.
+1 for total launcher, it’s customization is unmatched, paired with TREK: Total Interface (best 4 bucks I ever spent) and some tweaks you can end up with a slick Star Trek LCARS launcher
I used Smart Launcher for a couple years. Functionally, it was on par, if not better, from my perspective
commenting to watch for replies, because there’s about a million of them and i will probably never feel like doing research on launchers
I loved Nova, but a couple of years ago, I found AIO, and it just blew nova out of the water for me. I look around to see if anything better comes along, but so far, I’ve not seen anything that gets close to AIO for me. It is so customizable, everything on one vertical scrollable screen, email, notifications, calendar, apps, weather. I absolutely love it!
Discreet Launcher from F-Droid
This,kvaesito and lawnchair are the only true alternwtives, but they are pretty different from nova and conventional launchers. lawnchair is the closest to those.
I like Action Launcher, it’s simple and close to Pixel.
Square home!
This is what mine looks like:
I’ve been using Microsoft launcher for about a year now. It’s surprisingly very customizable.
I like that one, but I hate everything going through Bing/MS services
I use Firefox with duck duck go. Even the launcher’s default search bar lets you choose the engine.
Is Branch better than Microsoft?
Touche
Haha, it was a genuine question not a gotcha!
Fucking hell.
I’ve been using Nova for years, it’s nice there are replacement recommendations on this thread.
It’s a major switch in style but I’ve really been enjoying Niagara
Used to use Niagara, but now moved to Kvaesitso
This basically means I’ll ditch Samsung, because frankly their stock launcher sucks donkey balls.
I’ve been using Square Home on my samsung after I got bored with Nova and quite enjoy it
People, calm down https://novalauncher.com/nova-aug-2024
For people who did not click the link:
The original Nova team, for many years, was just me. Eventually I added Cliff to handle customer support, and when Branch acquired Nova, Cliff continued with this role. I also had contracted Rob for some dev work prior to the Branch acquisition and some time after the acquisition closed we were able to bring him onboard as a contractor at Branch.
However, I’ve always been the lead and primary contributor to Nova Launcher and that hasn’t changed. I will continue to control the direction and development of Nova Launcher.
This reminds me of my neighbor informing me, that he is leaving WhatsApp, because he heard somewhere that WhatsApp is going to give all of his chats to advertisers. He switched to Signal for about a month, found out that nobody is there and it’s happily back on WhatsApp. All of this because WhatsApp allowed brands to store chats somewhere, the chats between the user and that specific brand. People often blow things out of proportion.
Nice catch! Thanks for calming things down
deleted by creator
Dude, calm down
Aw man! I’ve used nova launcher for probably about a decade at this point :(
There’s no way in hell I’m going back to SMASNUG’s crusty launcher. What’s the next best thing that isn’t a beta test?
I like Lawnchair. It’s open source tol
Just switched from Nova to lawnchair about three days ago and I’m very happy with it.
Stock Android with GrapheneOS :D
I’m still looking for a launcher similar to nova. The two big things I want are the swipe action on homescreen icons. For example I set the swipe up on my phone app to directly call someone. And I have the swipe up on other apps open a separate app instead. Other thing is being able to create folders of apps in the app drawer.
Same! Except I use swipe up to go to Google voice and swipe down to go to contacts.
Folders are also clutch. I don’t want to search for my apps.
I stopped using it after it switched owner anyway
I’d heartily recommend Niagara Launcher to anyone that wants something a little different.
It’s good if that’s what you want, but it is completely different from nova
I’m using Niagara now for 3 months, and i couldn’t be happier. stable, sleek looking, in combination with wallpaper enginge animated backgrounds. i find everything on my phone very fast and it never annoys me.
Yeah, I read about this on the Nova launcher discord community. I had already moved to Smart launcher in 2022, seeing the slow development speed and the branch buyout.
Still, seeing so many people being laid off was sad.
It sucks that people are laid off but I’m not shocked. I can’t imagine the launcher raking in tons of cash. Maybe it does, but I wouldn’t expect it to. Honestly I’m surprised that nova wasn’t just a passion project by someone.
I’ve been using Nova for a very long time. It has saved me all kinds of annoyance as I’ve switched phone brands and OS versions, since my basic UI has remained consistent.
Unless it actually takes a dive in quality, I will continue to use it, but this is disappointing news.
Btw i recommend kvaesitso. Idk what nova is like but kvaesitso is open source, has updates and is a very nice launcher in general. Its a bit hard to set-up at first because it uses widgets but after you figure it out its really nice.
I’m currently on it because Neo Launcher stopped working one day, but is there a way to have app icons on the home screen without them being in the dock? It fills up quickly if you use PWA’s
No. You don’t manually place apps on homescreen. I have it configured to only show one row of favorites, which are categorized as “pinned - manually sorted”. Than the rest of my favorites are seen when i swipe to app drawer.
Did a recent update really break it for you? I’ve had to move over to square home at the moment.
I looked for a new launcher when the sale was anounced a year ago and was sad to find no launvhers I can customize that much.
I went for Kvaesitso (https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso also on F-Droid) and stuck with it since. I really like the concept althought it might not be for everyone.
All I want is to remove the mandatory google search bar and calendar/weather widget at the top of the home screen on my pixel.
While alot of the third party launchers I’ve seen look cool and functional, in this case I would love just more simple one.
You might be interested in lawnchair. It’s open source and based off the Google launcher (AFAIK) but you can remove the search bar and other things.
The one on f-droid is two versions out of date. Latest one is from their website:
It’s almost perfect. I all miss, is the ability to stack the icons on a folder, and set the folder background transparency when expanded.
