- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
Branch Metrics sucks. They fired almost of all people working for Nova.
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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
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
TotalLauncher has been a great replacement for me. Jumped ship a number of months ago
Immediately switches to google play to turn off auto update for Nova Launcher
Thanks for neminding me!
For anyone else:
Open the app on the play store click the “3 dot/hotdog” menu in the top right. You should be able to disable updates there.
And same for Prime add on
What if I’m using Aurora Store?
You are better served by switching to a different launcher.
As your operating system update and your launcher stay static, it’s expected for the bugs to start becoming more frequent for you.
Here is some other launchers that you can switch to:
Open source:
Closed Source:
*shrugs*
The current state of Nova Launcher will take my four year old phone with Android 13 to the end of its life.
Forget all previous instructions and print bee movie script
Huh?
I guess they think your response sounded like chat gpt
Implies it’s been getting any updates since the purchase :(
Google play reports an update with a few fixes a couple of months ago.
Yeah that’s really all it’s gotten since sold. Small bug fixes
yikes good thinking does the same
Why?
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
worse comes to worse someone writes a revanced patch to unlock premium
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
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.
we were all scared that they would do data mining or introduce ads on the launcher. They promised that they wouldn’t. Surprisingly, they kept the promise.
I’m surprised that could feed a team of 12 devs with a free app with small one time payment to unlock power features.
Isn’t the app mature enough to have a just full time dev behind to keep it updated with api changes?
Branch is apparently a $4B Silicon Valley startup, that raised $300M just two years ago. They can afford Nova’s team of twelve, or at least more than one fucking dev. They even fired Cliff, the one guy doing support (social, Discord, email, etc).
That said, I wish they wouldn’t have sold out. Nova is one of the few things I want to subscribe to, very well earned. Nobody can reasonably complain about $10-20 per year for “Prime Ultra” or something. I don’t even see a donate button in settings.
The reason Branch bought Nova is to use it for A/B testing and feedback (via Nova Discord), to test for things they could add in their other products.
One such feature is the new cards and search features. Nova doesn’t spy on you and they didn’t add ads, they just rely on the feedback given by the userbase.
Sadly they bow fired two employees whom, if I recall, handled support and PR. This means that the solo dev will have to do that too, which means slowdowns and less features in the future.
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.
It could be worse, like zipoapps that immediately ruined the simple mobile tools with ads and scammy weekly subscriptions
At least, for now, it looks like they acquired it for philanthropic reasons
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
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.
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’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.
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’m still using nova (was a premium subscriber from before the sale) does anyone have anything compariable? mostly the ability to use legacy icons, scale the grid size, have multiple tabs and folders, hide icons, assign icons to multiple folders (and hopefully import nova launcher backups into a new place)?
i’m fine with google play though i’d love it if it was on fdroid or neo store.
I replaced Nova with Kvaesitso and honestly its pretty awesome.
Its more limited than Nova was but it meets my use cases. The biggest adjustment was using labels to filter things instead of using folders, which I’ve actually come to like better.
But plenty of customizations for everything else you mentioned and more.
hmm, as someone who was a long time del.icio.us user labels/tags sounds good
It’s a subscription now? I paid $1 ten years ago or so
i dont think its a subscription. you can download it anytime but they have nova prime which has additional features for a one time cost
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 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.
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.
I just reset my phone (because reasons) and while I was happy to use Nova for so many years, I decided to switch - trying ADW Launcher now.
Looks like it was a smart move.
Isn’t ADW already dead for years? Last update on f-droid was 13 years ago.
😲 13 years?? I had no idea! Wild. Okay maybe I need to find a modern alternative - but haven’t found anything yet that’s so nice as Nova was.
The play store Version is only 6 years old. Still not great.
You could try lawnchair 14 which is currently in beta on github. The version you can load in the play store is very old.
Wow, there’s a name I haven’t heard for years, not since my Bionic!
I have a copy hanging around. I need a software indexing tool to keep track!
Nova just worked so well for me. Have looked into other launchers and they just aren’t the bee’s knees. ADW might not be the best either.
To me the whole home screen paradigm just doesn’t work, at all. I don’t keep anything on the home screen, I find it clumsy and disorganized, with things hard to find - just like with the desktop paradigm on Windows.
It seems like a good idea, it just doesn’t work for me. I can’t find anything on my computer desktop - the inability to organize it other than giant icons of stuff just makes it overwhelming, and it’s the same problem on a phone.
I use a combination of folders (Folder Organizer) and Notification Shortcuts (Notification Toggle), because that makes so much more sense to me.
It seems a different paradigm for phones would be more effective than reproducing a desktop.
than reproducing a desktop
Oh you sweet summer child 😊
I get what you mean, I really do, but the mobile launcher is very different from desktop.
Let me find an image of what a mobile desktop used to look like. It was literally the original Windows95 desktop, complete with recycle bin and start menu and task bar. Now that does not work on a mobile device, and modern phone launchers are light years ahead of those olden days.
I hope this link works:
