Technology

Wow, I've been using Nova Launcher. I paid for it and everything. Guess I'll uninstall. The ads wouldn't affect me, sure, but enshittification knows no bounds.

I recommend dragon launcher or lawnchair

dragon is now my favorite, the ring design is awesome and the dev is active, but lawnchair is the most like nova but open source.

They got a new owner years ago. No one should still be using it. Lawnchair has been great for me.

Once again the "Everything that's not FOSS will turn to shit at one point or another" theorem proves true.

Don't forget to leave a bad review before uninstalling it.

I JUST STARTED USING IT TWO WEEKS AGO CMON

Maybe after the big changes with the Linux desktop in the last year we might start to see renewed focus on a truly open source phone OS

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.

I'm getting really tired of companies pissing all over my name!

Yep. I recently bought a used Pixel 8 and wanted to install a new launcher - my googling turned up Nova launcher, but the app said it had ads, so I looked a bit further and installed Lawnchair instead. Does the job!

Nova launcher works great for me, I haven't let it update in years. Looks like that isn't going to change.

I've been burned so many times that I've finally learned my lesson. When I find that I like an app, that it does everything I want, the first thing I do is turn auto updates off. It can stay frozen in time forever, just working normally.

On 3, 2, 1,.... Everybody Juuuuuuump to any other good launchers

Lawnchair is pretty good.

It already had a new owner which is why I stopped using it years ago.

Dang... I saw this a while ago, but thanks to this post I looked again and it turned out that mine had automatically updated to the new version on Play Store. Went ahead and uninstalled it and then installed the latest Beta from before, and I was lucky that my email license still worked - don't know for how long though (not sure if the check is hardcoded in some way or if it makes an API call).

It's had a great run, but it's just sad that it has to end like this. Would've been spectacular if it was open-sourced as promised.

I started looking into alternatives and it seems like no other launcher is quite there yet, but Lawnchair looks promising for my use. The whole situation started looking like the appropriate time to learn some Android development; a while ago I was thinking of forking the AOSP launcher and trying to implement some stuff by myself, but now it seems like contributing to Lawnchair would be a better idea.

Thats why you want open source software, its the only software you can trust, its the only software that won't fuck you over

Octopi Launcher is the best replacement. The developer is very active and listens to suggestions. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otp.octopilauncher

This used to be my favorite piece of software I paid for. Then..... 💩

Ahh sonofabitch! It's already updated for me and there is no changelog. Turned off auto update.

Edit: and uninstalled. Lawnchair FTW.

Finally removed it from my phone, octopi launcher does most of what I need even on the free version I do intend to pay for the extra functions when I can.

But yeah just remember you can sort the app drawer by tags and it's almost there.

Is it not possible to have a launcher that modifies the menu that appears when you slide down from the top of the screen (brightness and notifications menu..)?

I would really like a separate menu for quickly changing brightness and volume

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 Octopi. For me, it's an almost perfect replacement. Plus it's a local developer.