Pixel 6 pro. I use Nova launcher. It works great and is very customizable, especially with icon placement. I recommend it.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
584 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Sadly Nova was purchased by a Chinese company with a history of invasive data harvesting last year.
I had premium up until a year ago, but I can't recommend it anymore after their purchase.
Choose open source, people.
Well, shit. I just bought it the other day and started with it. Had nfi.
FYI, you can download a version from before the acquisition. I'm running the 7.0.25 release and restricting network access on both the base app and the premium license. Not sure if it's foolproof, but hopefully I find a launcher that does app drawer tabs at least as well.
Can you give any more detail on this? I really like Nova and was really sad when it was purchased. I've tried a couple different launchers, but I don't like any of them as much as I liked nova. How did you get the old app? Just off some APK website? And then just install the license from Playstore? Or is there someway to download old versions from the play store? How are you restricting it's internet access? Would live to try this and get back my Nova launcher .
mlauncher- a minimal text based open source fork of Olauncher
Wow I like this. Not the background but the implementation in general. No hate on the background, just not my style.
well you can use solid black it looks cool on that use to have it.
I use the Niagara Launcher, it serves favorite apps up in a vertical list, and other apps in an alphabetical list. It's very quick and easy to navigate and quite customizable with some widget support. It works with music apps, has a dark mode, makes changing icon packs easy. You can swipe up to search, or add a search button. I just love how minimal, clean and functional it is.
Here is my home screen. Note there is no left or right screen to swipe to .
Here is the app list, under N.
Some settings
And the app store link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bitpit.launcher
Checkin it out, how can i find Web Apps i installed via my Browser?
Oh boy. I love Niagara. I've used it one every phone for quite a few years now.
Two of my favorite features are the ability to tuck widgets into folders. I use the system ui communications widget in my messaging folder to take me straight to my most used chats.
When you connect to bluetooth, it automatically pulls up a now playing widget (it's hidden when bluetooth is disconnected) and pulls up links to my music/podcast apps. It's so dynamic and highly customizable.
I'm loving my paid version of Nova. there's a great free version if you wanna try it out too and there's a crazy amount of customization. I'm on a Pixel 5a right now and with the Pix Material You Light/Dark icons it's quite nice. I do think the default Pixel Launcher is more polished, but Nova just has so many options that I've gotten used to enjoying.
Nova was bought by an Ad company a while ago and is now out for your data btw.
Apex Launcher. Left Nova a while back and it offers basically the same features without the aggressive bullshit. And while the pro version is somewhat subscription based the lifetime price (7โฌ here) is absolutely reasonable. `
What was aggressive about Nova?
Nova has been absolutely aggressive towards customers asking about data transfer after they sold out towards a company that is heavily into data hoarding.
How have they been aggressive? I keep hearing this but haven't been given any examples. When I look the issue up it says that Nova has said they won't force any data gathering and anything that gets added to the launcher will be optional.
See the topics above, there are more than enough examples.
What do you mean by aggressive bullshit?
Mainly the stance towards customers that inquired about data hoarding after the sell out.
KISS Launcher. Perfect companion for a hardware keyboard (https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry).
In general, you use it like the Windows start menu. Type the first few characters of an app name, hit enter and there you are.
Microsoft Launcher
It's free, it's customizable.
I use Niagara with a live wallpaper called Wallow. It just creates a beautiful and simplified experience for me that has all the features I need and gets out of my way when I don't.
Wallow is beautiful, we need a wallow theme community somewhere here
Niagara ftw
I use Niagara Launcher, because it's minimal and quite comfy.
EDIT: The latest update (that I just applied) has put a lot of the features I use (custom font, battery percentage) behind a paywall. I will be looking for alternatives.
I mean if you really like it why don't just give the devs some support?
10โฌ per year or 30โฌ for a one time payment seems a bit steep for a launcher, especially when it is more on the slim side feature wise
Niagara
A couple people here mentioned Kvaesitso so U had a quick look at that, it seems really neat and customizable too.
It just looks and feels soo good!
LawnChair, it's open source, customizable and has drawer folders
I've been using Nova Launcher for years now, but I explored other options a few months ago because of the ownership change. Lawnchair was the best one I found, but I didn't switch to it because it looked like it was missing features I needed. Folders was an important one.
Which version / source are you using for the app? I got a bit lost trying to find a recent version. The last release on the GitHub is from 2018, and the last prerelease is from a year ago. There's also an issue for the folders which I was following, and it actually just went stale: https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/issues/2471
I also see Lawnchair2, but that looked like a fork or something
To be honest, I can't remember where I got the apk and since its only a launcher without internet access I didn't really care about updates.
The first search result (https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair) seems to be very active with the last change 9 hours ago.