This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Thanks for the reminder! I had switched to Lawnchair, but I just realized I had forgotten to uninstall Nova. Fixed!
Same. Just uninstalled that spyware
Anyone that gives a single shit about their data being sold to third parties should have dumped Nova a long time ago.
This is the first I've heard about any privacy issues. I dumped Nova recently because I found a good FOSS launcher.
Mind sharing which launcher you switched to?
Dragon Launcher. Apparently it isn't on Play; you have to use F-Droid.
And yet another piece of software I have to abandon because of this dioshit cult behaviour.
Thanks guys. You really just went ahead and put your dick in it.
ew... it is my favourite launcher but I disabled updates once it got acquired 😭
Does anyone know of a launcher with similar customisability? All the active launchers I found focus on minimalism and no or monochrome icons, while Nova lets me arrange my colourful icons in whatever way I want, reskin them, etc 😐
Edit: Lawnchair's Nova backup import feature in their newest beta release pushed me to try it out, let's see 👀
Edit 2: ok it seems to only have lost my home-pinned website bookmarks, so this could be a workable solution 😊
I'd recommend Niagara Launcher but I think they also got acquired feelsbadman. We're going to be forced into Linix Phones at this rate.
there have been enough reasons to ditch nova in the past years, in case someone is still using it
I was still using it because I was too lazy to migrate things over to another.
And then I saw this post, so I guess it was time. Only took half an hour to figure out how to get Lawnchair doing basically what I wanted it to.
Octopi Launcher is damn near a replacement. Learn nothing new, muscle memory for swiping up or down on dock icons to open other apps.
Those were my requirements and it nails it.
What a great advertisement for almost any other launcher.
Lawnchair is my go to if anyone wants a pretty simple and customizable launcher that respects your privacy.
What's been everyone's experiences in customization on it? I keep mine simple of fun background and a calendar and only the app drawer. No second pages
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.
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy I hate corporations so much WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
anyways here's my new homescreen
I still need to make groups and change images...
Omg omg kityyyyy
So basically any advantage over the native launcher is void?
Something I cannot find in any other FOSS launcher that is the one part of Nova I want to keep: gestures on home page folders. Home page icons that I can swipe up or down to do independent actions and can be an app or folder of apps. Nothing I've found seems to have the same features in this regard.
Octopi Launcher does this
Not who you're responding to, but part of me really wants Octopi to be available on F-Droid and open source
That might be what i switch to for now, but really want a FOSS option so I don't have to worry about doing this again
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.
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!
Total enshittification. Practically conned then kicked out the original team so that they make their own intrusive changes.
Hell, any data they harvest will and can be sold to other parties. God knows how much fucking lunatic Peter could be offering them.
If anyone is stubborn enough and until someone makes a near 1:1 version -- and Lawnchair is functionally close to what Nova does -- do backup the existing settings, uninstall the app, roll back to the pre-2022 7.0.57b version, sideload install, then from GPlay disable auto-updating for the app. Yeah, and put restrictions on the app from trying to do telemetry.
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
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.
