Nova Launcher could soon introduce Nova AI, a built-in AI assistant complete with a chatbot, and a new Nova Plus subscription tier
well if you didn’t jump ship in 2022 i guess this is your time
Yeah it’s time. Nova was great but now it’s fully enshitified. I went with Niagara. There’s a short learning period, less than a week for me to feel comfortable, but I love it. Very simple and clean.
https://github.com/JackEblan/YagniLauncher this should be fine for most of you
I guess it’s fair for everyone now that there are no more copyright laws being enforced and it has become a free for all. As long as it’s not one-sided then I’m all for it. /s
Lawnchair runs fine on GrapheneOS.
What does any of this do? What problem or need is it addressing? I’m honestly so confused by 99% of technology these days, it seems to be nothing more than an electronic pacifier for an entire generation of ADHD addicts.
By adding launchers you can customize the Android “desktop” way more in depth and it enables you to add for example custom app icons
I give up. I’m moving to iphone. I’ve been using Android for 16 years and I’m finally tired Boss. There is just too much bad android news stories to count. See you later space cowboys.
I mean iphone definitely has ai tracking everything you do, even when you keep the phone in your pocket, so i don’t think that would help you in anyway
Not a solution. Apple is just as evil and their design and interface is horrible.
And the solution is iOS…?
The solution is moving to a cabin in the woods with a Nokia 8210. I’m not read for that (yet).
Graphene
Looking forward to seeing what comes next for them. Nice platform.
Lawnchair is a pretty good FOSS launcher.
Do you know if Lawnchair can do a splitscreen with two apps? I got a new phone with lawnchair and I couldn’t figure out how to do it the other day. I know it used to be a part of Android. I don’t know if it’s part of the OS, the launcher, or Google just decided to remove the feature.
I’m not sure if this is even launcher dependant thing? I’m on pixel 9 pro, using lawnchair myself.
In your open app-selector, you should have drop-down to start split screen mode.
spoiler
Oh great: one more AI to disable.
damn i remember the good old days with Nova where everything was so smooth. Evie launcher too. And even we have many problems with them, Microsoft launcher was good in the beginning.
There were many good options. Now it’s just Niagara Launcher that doesn’t suck.
Edit: I see Octopi getting mentioned a lot. Might have to check that one out.
The hell happened? First it was ads, now this bs. It was such a good launcher too.
Got bought up Branch, and the original dev left when they refused to open source it as promised.
The end began 4 years ago. Now they’re set up to grift anyone using the app.
You just solved one of my long-standing problems! I’ve been looking for a launcher that could replace Nova for me, but I hadn’t been able to find anything that really did the job. Octopi for the win!
I am in the process of moving over my highly-customized setup now. And I made the larger of the two donations, in support of the app.
Thanks for suggesting it and thanks to the developer who built it!
A third party launcher for Android(homescreen). It was very beloved for being clean and lightweight while also having a bunch of customization.
It was bought up by an adware company not long ago.
What I don’t get is: why exactly is such software so popular ? Does one really need it instead of just swiping twice or thrice to find the app one is looking for?
The stock default launchers tend to suck for one reason for another. Icons taking up a lot more screen space than needed is a major one for me.
Being able to adjust grid size is a great advantage to custom launchers.
i think my Samsung had this shitty search feature or something that wanted to put a bunch of shit on one of my pages. Can’t quite remember. But I know Google recently did the same thing with the Pixel. There’s this fucking search bar that takes up the whole bottom of the screen on every single page. And they won’t let you remove it. That alone was enough for me to switch.
That damn search bar was the only reason I ever started looking at launchers. I used LG and Samsung phones for years and wanted a more streamlined interface closer to stock android, so I got a pixel.
And the very first time I turned it on, I was incredibly disappointed to see this giant Google logo nailed to the bottom of the screen, existing only to provide functionality that I don’t want.
So into the launcher rabbit hole I dove.
Some of us also enjoy customizing and designing our own home screen. I have mine set up to just show my wallpaper and a grid of 9 icons. You can also change icons, icon shape, etc. I have simple icons for my folders rather than an ugly icon with 4 little icons inside it that seems to be the default for “folder” on all phones.
I enjoy the aesthetics of it. I think it’s ironic that iPhones are so freaking ugly and messy when their whole brand was built on clean design.
It’s putting whatever you want and what you don’t want on the home screen, including for example launching into search.
My phone stock launcher search dialog that once would have been to type the app name became a ‘multi-search’ that would do internet search and AI search and app search was sluggish and third set of results. So I go for a launcher that keeps the app search field just a quick name based search of applications.
It does also do things like let me opt into fitting more icons on the screen at a time, since the default launcher has some ludicrous small number of icons on screen at a time.
Also, the scrolling lets me scroll letters to rapidly get to apps starting with ‘m’ for example without typing, though I never use that.
It also presents a different ‘folder’ design where a tap on it launches a default app from the group, and a quick slide opens it up to select a less popular, alternate app quickly.
Also, two finger swipe from top takes me straight to typing app name to launch.
Someone else I knew swapped launchers just to have a different wallpaper behavior that their stock launcher wouldn’t do.
Currently using Octopi.
If I didn’t find Octopi launcher a couple months back, and jumped ship from my overly customized Nova setup, this would definitely have made me switch now.
I had it since at least 2018. At least from then were the 5 stars reviews I had left, now replaced with 1 star ones…
+1 for Octopi, it’s the only one that really does almost everything Nova does
You know some people beat this drum that more people should pay for good software and that it guarantees it’s longevity and independence, and so I did buy the pro version of Nova years ago and now we are here, I think when it comes to software unless it’s open source and you can have full control over it then it’s not worth anything, as it’s only matter of time before it either gets deleted or enshitified, that’s why I started shifting to open source alternatives for most things
The problem with paying is that it doesn’t solve the fundamental economics. Marginal cost of copying software is near zero, fractions of a cent. So there’s just no way to justify economically charging anything more than a nominal fee for software. The entire concept of charging to allow people to download stuff is simply pure greed, and paying a little bit won’t stop the greed in the slightest. And a lot of people simply enjoy creating software, so there’s always going to be a foss alternative.
