Nova Launcher unashamedly inserts malware ads into your home screen now.

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• texture@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  nova was good many years ago. iirc they got bought by an advertising company, and that was the day i deleted it.

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• ViperActual@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  Will things still be okay if I disabled updates for it?

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• Bazell@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Image

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• yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m enjoying a lot using Dragon Launcher, it’s a bit more complex with a bit of a learning curve but really nice once you get used to it. It’s less known so I’m trying to increase its visibility because it deserve all the love it can get.

  f-droid.org/packages/org.elnix.dragonlauncher

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  • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Can you elaborate a bit on what makes it hard to learn and what is so nice about it once you do? I didn’t see much for details on the linked page.

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    • yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨28⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      But of course buddahriffic! Let’s see how I can explain it, it is quite a different approach to other more classical launchers. There’s no option to put icons on the launcher, there’s no paging or anything. In fact when I found it out it couldn’t even have widgets. But the Dev has been hard at work it seems and has been making really nice changes. Now it allows to use widgets, so at least you got that going. But otherwise the screen remains rather empty and clean.

      Then the usage goes with gestures, but I’ve found it is less about gestures and just about straight lines of movement with your finger and how long. So when you start it it has nearly nothing set up to be used, you need to make a long click (I think it is like 3 seconds long and you see some UI feedback) to bring up the settings. In the settings you can see one of those screens with multiple rings in the screenshots on FDroid. On those rings you can manually and one by one add icons for apps or actions (and in the last version even more rings nested). You can set as many as you want, in as many rings as you feel like (maybe there’s some limits I don’t know). The customization options are quite nice, including distance to move the finger for each ring and area of no effect (if you want to cancel the action, I keep moving my finger in the screen quickly, browse the options in the rings and cancel it in the center where I started the gesture, it’s kinda satisfying, like a fidget thingy).

      So in the home page, you can’t see the rings (maybe there’s an option for that) and wherever you press will set the center of the rings and then with the same gesture always you can reach the same action/app. The result is quite clean and easy interactions, once you learn your own setup. The apps I use less are a bit harder to find if I forget where I put them, but in those cases you can open a list of all apps just like any launcher. And at the beginning I was struggling to get used to it, but now I find it very convenient and fast for my most used apps. Getting the right place for the icons in the rings is also a bit of a learning process of where you want things.

      Well, I hope I made it clearer and not more confusing :) maybe with the description and the screenshots in the app store you can get a pretty good idea of how it goes.

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• Noblesavage@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I switched over to Lawnchair leaving Nova Launcher just last week. All the Lemmy articles about the new owners forced my hand. Perfect timing!

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• NarrativeBear@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  1000054690

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• greybeard@feddit.online ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I was watching a youtube video of an engineer student showing off his project. He had a stopwatch app up to show how quickly something was done, and there was a banner ad at the bottom of it. Like, it’s a damn stopwatch, who thought “I worked hard on this, and deserve to make some money!”. Also, how normalized to ads was that person that they didn’t think twice about letting that ad roll in their video.

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• webkitten@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is exactly why the first thing I did was disable updates for Nova, just in case.

  I have been using Lawnchair Nightly as my default home screen though; there are a couple of things that aren’t carried over from Nova (mainly folder and tabs in app drawer) but for the most part it’s pretty comparable.

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  • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What version of lawnchair are you using? I have app folders (although its a bit clunky to manage in the UI, they do exist)

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    • webkitten@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It has basic app folders; I just meant some of the controls that you can do in Nova like setting folders to specific tabs, showing apps in folders in main draw, etc.

      (I’m on Obtainium Lawnchair Nightly 1/22/26)

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• TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Nova sold to shitheels, I switched to Lawn Chair a customizable FOSS Launcher

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  • Tanoh@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Lawn Chair looks ok, but unless they fix this issue I will not switch.

    github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/…/2683

    Basically you can’t set the main “home page”, ie where you end up on home press. I like to have it set up so the home is in the middle and then you can swipe left to go to another screen(s), and swipe right to go to other screen(s).

    Forcing the home screen to be the first means you can only swipe right, and have to go through many useless screens to get to the one you want.

    Doubt they will fix it either, as it has been open since 2022. Without knowing their stack it sounds like a really simple fix, just storw which is the main screen. Normally it is [1], 2, 3, 4. But let the user choose to put it as [3] for example if they want.

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    • Fmstrat@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Without knowing their stack it sounds like a really simple fix, just storw which is the main screen.

      Soooo… if it’s simple… contribute then?

      I’ve learned an app’s stack for far more mundane things. If you want others to build something you want, it helps to build things other’s want. Sounds like there would be a lot of interest if you took this on.

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    • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      and have to go through many useless screens to get to the one you want.

      Two things.

      Clean your shit up and prioritize. Everything I could ever dream of is on one screen.

      Second, it’s foss. Contribute.

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    • sm1dger@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’ve switched, but this really is my one major gripe. Good to see others see it as a priority too, but if it’s been a conversation for 4 years then I’m not optimistic

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    • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They recently started on wraparound homescreens (still a little buggy), so that might indicate they could soon add it. Still waiting on a way to remive widget paddings. In general lawnchair has so much more padding than nova, and not enough customizability to remove it.

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  • Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I just tried Lawn Chair. Started building my home screen by adding two games to a folder. It dropped the second game right on my home page as well as adding it to a folder. Then, when I tried to remove the duplicate, it crashed.

    I’m guessing this is not at all typical and this is a “me” problem, otherwise nobody would ever recommend it. :P

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  • Godort@lemmy.ca ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Lawn Chair is so good

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  • 0ops@piefed.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’ve liked lawnchair better than Nova since it was in a pre-release state years ago. I admit I haven’t used either in at least 5 years, probably longer, so this opinion might be grossly out of date, but when I last tried it I was 90% convinced that it was just the KitKat aosp launcher with a material skin. It just felt clunky. Lawnchair actually felt native to newer android versions while still having all the customizations I needed.

    Again, I haven’t used either launcher in forever, so take this whole thing with an agricultural block of salt

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    • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      HHHGHHHGGHHGHHHHMMMMM.

      HgMPH.

      (Cow noises for you city folk)

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  • criticon@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Uff I installed it last week but I haven’t had the time to customize it and add all my shortcuts so I’m still using Nova. I’ll definitely need to change it tomorrow

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• hairyfeet@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They asked for ad permissions so I uninstalled and now giving Niagara a go. Have a try, it’s different.

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• pachrist@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Worst part is I paid for it years ago. Now I have to pay again? Nope. Great while it lasted, but it’s buggy garbage now.

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  • NENathaniel@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They’re not honouring previous purchases?

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  • glitch1985@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I paid 99 cents for nova launcher prime back in December 2016 so I feel like I got my money’s worth but still unfortunate to see the app go downhill.

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• pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Plug for Lawnchair

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  • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I just checked out the website and I’m having a hard time understanding what the point of it is. I’ve never installed any sort of custom launcher, so maybe I’m missing out, but the application advertises itself on being very similar to the regular pixel launcher, not needing root access, and nothing else. Even in the FAQ I only see that it supports some plugin that upgrades some widget, unless you have root where it supports whatever you can do with the “recents api”. Neither of those seem remotely worth it. So what does it actually do?

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    • cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I haven’t used the pixel launcher in ages, but last time I did, you could not remove the “search bar”. That alone justifies a different launcher to me.

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    • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      So what does it actually do?

      It replaces the launcher (“desktop”) of your phone with something else. Maybe something faster, or using less resources, or something you can customize to your taste.

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    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The main thing for me, it gets google out of the picture. No AI, no google search bar, etc.

      It also allows me to manage apps in the app drawer. I can hide any stock apps, and put less commonly uses apps in to folders (I miss tabs on Nova). Instead of scrolling through pages of home screen, I swipe up and can see all my common apps at once, no scrolling. The home screen now has free space for widgets.

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    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I switched to Lawnchair when Google starting messing with the search bar. They added features right where my thumb would press to use the search bar, so I was constantly opening an AI search that I did not want. Lawnchair let me stick with a launcher I liked and was used to, but gave me the customizability to get rid of bullshit like that.

      And I generally don’t like change, and I certainly don’t want to have to do any work to facilitate a change that I don’t like in the first place, but Lawnchair was incredibly easy to set up and go. Runs basically like an app, you change your default launcher to Lawnchair (and I assume this step is similar for any launcher you’d use), and bam, runs on top of everything and that’s that. Simplicity is key for a simple guy like me.

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    • CouncilOfFriends@slrpnk.net ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      By default it does look similar. However it has customization options comparable to Nova, or at least I was able to easily replicate how I’d configured it.

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• updn@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Enshittification

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• nieminen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I used Nova for as long as it’s been a thing. Paid for pro. Abandoned it immediately after they released the news a few weeks ago about the tracking and ads.

  I switched to Octopi Launcher. It’s really good, and in active development. Author listens to his users and is always adding fun new features.

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• barnaclebutt@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It pops up just like a gravestone. Bye bye Nova launcher. I guess apps don’t die, they rot from enshitification.

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• Chozo@fedia.io ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I have to imagine that anybody savvy enough to make the decision to install a third-party launcher is also savvy enough to immediately uninstall that shit.

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• merdaverse@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The irony of an ad for an adblocker…

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  • BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    My vote still for total launcher.

    This post has just reminded me to change from Microsoft keyboard to FUTO. I wasn’t worried about the data harvesting, but it started redirecting my searches to Bing by hijacking the search button on the keyboard.

    I’m 30% slower with FUTO though at this stage. Not sure if it’s my swype style being slightly out of calibration or my device is not fast enough to keep up. (Moto g84).

    Will see how I get on.

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    • Trent@lemmy.ml ⁨46⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Total Launcher is where I landed.

      Also, Heliboard is a pretty decent keyboard.

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    • lohky@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’ve been using FUTO for a few months now and the Swype and autocorrect are fucking horrible. Still using it because fuck Google I guess, but man I wish it were better.

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    • filcuk@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Total is truly amazing, especially for a foldable, no match. Few small long standing bugs though, maybe I should take the initiative to report those

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    • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      i switched from gboard to ThumbKey. Took some time to get used to, but now the usual qwerty/swipe keyboards seem inferrior to me. Like, swipe is cool and all, but only as long as the keyboard knows the word you’re looking for. As soon as you need to type out anything manually, it always turns into hell

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• flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  As gross as it is, this writing has been on the wall for years now. As soon as Branch did the initial purchase anyone that cared about such things should have starting looking at alternatives.

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• onceandfuturealice@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I switched to Niagara a few years ago and can never go back. The alphabetized list of apps and slick scroll are super addictive.

  Here’s what it looks like: (ignore the use of Papyrus, I just use it because it drives my friends nuts)

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  • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    I thought I was a “customize everything” Nova launcher kind of guy, but when I heard the original developer had quit the company that bought it I switched to Niagara. I thought I’d just try it out for a few days, immediately got hooked. Just a few things to set up then your done and getting to everything is so much faster and easier, one handed.

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  • RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Just remember me posting this is your fault

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    • MellowBright@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Thanks for the new artist to follow! On topic: Never could like Niagara, it’s just not for me. I’ve just been using a now ancient version of Nova Launcher Prime v7 from before it got sold.

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    • jacecomix@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ricky no!
      Think of the children!
      You wouldn’t want to subject them to getting into Digimon as a hobby.
      (It’s too late for me, I play these shitty video games and enjoy it somehow)

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  • krdo@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I love it too!

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    • jacecomix@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶

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  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Same to all of that

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  • whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    same and I love it! Hope it stay the same forever as it’s not open source(if I’m not mistaken)

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  • Deebster@infosec.pub ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, it’s really pleasing

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  • MadBigote@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    PAPYRUS!!!

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• iamthetot@piefed.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Used Nova for almost a decade. Switched a few weeks ago when the news broke of them adding ad tracking.

  I like Kvaesitso so far.

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  • mbp@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thanks! I’ve tried it out and it’s feeling great so far

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  • KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No easy way to put icons on home the screen… wow

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    • iamthetot@piefed.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I mean, that was a feature not a bug for me. After using Nova for so long I actually liked the way Kvaesitso shook it up, almost felt like a whole new phone. I honestly already did minimum icons on home using Nova anyway, grouping as much as possible into minimum folders, smallest size.

      Of course, it won’t be for everyone. If you really like icons on home, I also tried Lawnchair and Octopi and they were pretty solid.

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• varjen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I switched lawnchair. It’s ok but feels a bit “We have Nova Launcher at home”.

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  • caradenada@feddit.cl ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I also made that switch. Lawnchair works great but some of their settings are clunky. Managing app folders is kind of bothersome. You can’t do it right in the app drawer, you have to dive into Lawnchair’s settings.

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    • varjen@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And when you have moved everything into folders you can’t sort the folders. Also can’t get rid of the stupid horizontal padding on widgets.

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• tumblechinchilla@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Well this sucks. Been using Nova for a long time. God fucking damnit I hate this timeline. To all the folks recommending lawnchair thanks. Ended up settling on lawn chair.

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• eletes@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Thanks for the reminder to uninstall, I had switched to lawn chair months ago but never got rid of nova

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  • tumblechinchilla@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Chose lawn chair because of you. Thanks person. Appreciate.

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• stefenauris@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Man how the mighty have fallen. It’s rather sad actually

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• VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Yeah, Nova has been dead for a while now. I thought there was a fork, but I’m just now finding out that’s no longer in development.

  I’ve migrated around other launchers, and I now use μlauncher, which fulfills my needs for a minimalist launcher with function.

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• LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Ive been using the FOSS launcher Kvaesitso for about a year now due to annoyances with Nova. It’s a different setup entirely, but I always preferred the app drawer over having scattered icons on the homescreen so its worked great for me. Anyone interested in trying something new should check it out. :)

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  • Damage@feddit.it ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s what I’ve been using, but I still prefer Nova’s ability to create folders, I could open most apps I needed in an instant by sliding to the correct screen, opening the folder and tapping the app. With Kvaesitso even with categories and such it’s much more of a hassle, the fastest way is typing the first letters of the name, not the same.

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    • iamthetot@piefed.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I made pseudo folders by applying tags to apps I wanted to group, gave that tag an emoji, added a few app boxes to the widget page, and added the tags I wanted quick access to into those app boxes. Result looks like this.
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    • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I disabled the automatic search on mine.

      I just open the app drawer by sliding up from the bottom and tap the app I want to open. I set the favorites section with everything I need most often. And the 5 apps on the dock home screen dock for my absolute most frequent apps. Most apps that aren’t in either of those sections are ones I rarely open anyway.

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• Skanky@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  OneUI honestly isn’t that bad. Not as good as Nova, but it’s fine - especially when using the Goodlock customizations.

  On a related note, is there any way to change all my apps on the play store to not auto update? I assume I have to do this one by one, because why would they make it that easy…

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  • Tilgare@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Agreed - we’re a LONG way past Touchwiz nightmare fuel at this point. Other than the Samsung branded bloat, it’s pretty close to stock android these days. The home screen has tons of customization features, and Goodlock adds even more. I stopped using Nova because of a LONG time Android bug with 3rd party launchers where apps would just show a blank screen or otherwise wouldn’t launch when opened immediately after going home. I found Pixel launcher to be passable (but I heavily preferred Nova), and found that Samsung’s launcher might have actually been better when I switched phones later.

    I jumped on a Google issue tracker thread in 2023 that still sends me emails because it gets a flood of people all these years later still reporting the issue is not resolved.

    Now I’m on a Fold 7 anyways, and Samsung handles your home screen while folding and unfolding pretty well, I don’t expect that Nova does.

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• Crashumbc@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I mean you should have uninstalled it when they sold it… Knee this was coming.

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• titanicx@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You know I’m still waiting to see any of these ads. Soon as they pop up I’ll be switching but until that point I’m sticking with what I like.

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• THB@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  For anyone looking for more customization, Octopi Launcher has been the closest replacement for me. I’ve tried Lawnchair, Niagara, et al.

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  • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I really like Niagara tho, it’s real smooth to use and can look great. But it’s something you have to adapt to, it’s a completely different workflow.

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    • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I went from the stock launcher to Niagara and I didn’t feel the learning curve was steep. I did watch a couple of their YouTube videos first before switching.

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  • Localhorst86@feddit.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Octopi launcher so far looks to be the closest to what can replace Nova for me, but an absolute deal breaker for me is the inability to separate business-apps within the app-drawer to a separate page.

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    • THB@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s possible with tags, but requires an extra step to hide. I ended up having all the same tabs as I did with Nova.

      1 - You tag those apps “Business” 2 - Long press on the “Business” tag tab and uncheck “Show apps in all apps list”

      Octopi is great but I’ve definitely found settings hidden all over the place. The dev is fond of hiding them inside long presses of various things.. XD

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  • Pzulu@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yep, 100%

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