Yep - and I recall arguing at the time with one of the Nova people sent to Reddit to try and sell us on the idea that everything was just fine, and nothing would change, and hey, look over there, a huge distracting thing…
It was bullshit then, and so it’s proved. What a waste of a truly exceptional launcher.
I’ve been using Kvaesisto as my daily, which is a nice hybrid of the drawer-style launchers and search-based launchers. It’s coded from the ground up, has an impressive number of integrations, themed widgets that slide out of sight, etc.
KISS launcher is the original and still the best of the search based launchers. Okay, I have no idea if it is really the original, but it’s been around for over a decade now, and still has an active development community. It’s been forked hundreds of times into similar projects which add some additional features, but if you want a minimal launcher that gets out of your way, then this is what you’re looking for.
A similar, minimal style launcher is OLauncher, which has also been around for a few years and has been forked like crazy.
One of the best traditional drawer-style launchers is Lawnchair, which has sprung back to life after a hiatus from updating. It’s built on the Android launcher, with lots of additional customizations.
I don’t know of any current project that approaches the maximal customization philosophy of Nova Launcher. It was really one of a kind. All of the above are FOSS, but even in the closed software space, I don’t think there is anything like Nova.
It was already dead for a lot of users when they sold it to an analytics company in 2022.
I stopped using it then and I actually thought they went under, huh.
Yep - and I recall arguing at the time with one of the Nova people sent to Reddit to try and sell us on the idea that everything was just fine, and nothing would change, and hey, look over there, a huge distracting thing…
It was bullshit then, and so it’s proved. What a waste of a truly exceptional launcher.
yeah i didn’t know it still exists lol
I’ve been using it for ages and didn’t even know about all of this. What a shitshow, jesus christ.
I’m getting a new phone pretty soon anyway so after I stick Graphene on there I’ll find something new instead for sure.
I’ve been using Kvaesisto as my daily, which is a nice hybrid of the drawer-style launchers and search-based launchers. It’s coded from the ground up, has an impressive number of integrations, themed widgets that slide out of sight, etc.
KISS launcher is the original and still the best of the search based launchers. Okay, I have no idea if it is really the original, but it’s been around for over a decade now, and still has an active development community. It’s been forked hundreds of times into similar projects which add some additional features, but if you want a minimal launcher that gets out of your way, then this is what you’re looking for.
A similar, minimal style launcher is OLauncher, which has also been around for a few years and has been forked like crazy.
One of the best traditional drawer-style launchers is Lawnchair, which has sprung back to life after a hiatus from updating. It’s built on the Android launcher, with lots of additional customizations.
I don’t know of any current project that approaches the maximal customization philosophy of Nova Launcher. It was really one of a kind. All of the above are FOSS, but even in the closed software space, I don’t think there is anything like Nova.