Uninstalled within seconds. I’m trialling Hyperion launcher now, which seems pretty crisp.
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.
The irony of an ad for an adblocker…
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.
Total Launcher is where I landed.
Also, Heliboard is a pretty decent keyboard.
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
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
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.
You can change some of the autocorrect settings. But yea its not the best for sure
I agree it isn’t great. But I don’t want to be in the abusive relationship with Microsoft. Yes I could probably just turn off the deep search option but they’ll just do something else.
Maybe there’s a better option than FUTO, it’s just the first thing I saw as a recommended alternative.
It seems if I swype carefully it’s reasonably accurate but I have to be patient.
Same. I used a different android device the other day that still had gboard on it and the swype felt so much better. Still won’t go back.
They asked for ad permissions so I uninstalled and now giving Niagara a go. Have a try, it’s different.
I switched over to Lawnchair leaving Nova Launcher just last week. All the Lemmy articles about the new owners forced my hand. Perfect timing!
Moved in the last couple of days to Lawnchair. Very happy with it. You can set the icon size very small to fit everything on the HomeScreen.
oh damn :( I used to use it but that was several years ago and it seems quite a bit has changed…
I still use it. No ads. It’s still exactly the same.
I’m in the same boat; Nova was the first non-stock launcher I ever used. RIP to the memories
you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
I have used Nova Launcher for years. Was surprised I hadn’t already bought it. Discovered a 3 buxk playstore credit from google, so I paid 1 buck in the end. An easy decision.
Apparently it was in maintenance mode for years with a single developer who left in late 2025, and it was sold to a swedish company that plans to develop/support it further. Hopefully they do it well.
it was sold to a swedish company that plans to develop/support it further. Hopefully they do it well.
Narrator: They aren’t
Perhaps. Software comes and goes, and paying a small one-off amount for something genuinely useful, after many years of service, is acceptable to me. There are alternatives too, which is good.
and it was sold to a swedish company that plans to develop/support it further. Hopefully they do it well.
Well they’ve already added ads and tracking so “well” is not on the table at this point.
True… many people don’t get the opt-out option, I suppose. There are alternatives, anyway.
This is amazing. What is it from?
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…
!
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.
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.
They’re not honouring previous purchases?
I’ve been scrolling through these trying to figure out if this applies to the paid version or just the free one. Have you tried it to see if the paid version actually pops up ads?
I haven’t noticed any changes to the paid version. Which seems to match what the company said in their recent blog update: https://novalauncher.com/nova-is-here-to-stay
I bought the paid version several years ago, but I’m still switching to Lawnchair
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.
What’s so special about launchers? I fail to see its or understand what it does, and if I should change mine?
I changed mine finally after Google kept adding shit to the search bar, specifically AI stuff. And it was conveniently placed right where my thumb had pressed prior to the implementation of this new shitty feature.
I went from the stock Google launcher on Pixel (still using my 6a, til it dies) to Lawnchair. Lawnchair is essentially the stock Google launcher, but I could get rid of stupid features. It looks and performa nearly identically.
I’m just a fussy bastard, and I like everything to be ‘just so’ on my computers and phones. If I want to move a zig, I’m gonna find a way to move that zig.
Launchers allow you to have a customised UI, maybe you don’t want to have a Google search bar in you home screen, the default UI doesn’t allow you to change it, a launcher does. What about changing order of icons, maybe you want your icons to shape the capital letter F, with a launcher you can, or you know that real gangstas use IBM Plex Mono instead of Roboto, you ain’t nobody’s bitch, a launcher helps you with that
On a shield Android TV, the official launcher show ads for stupid shows. I don’t want any of that crap and want to organize apps the way I like.
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.
What version of lawnchair are you using? I have app folders (although its a bit clunky to manage in the UI, they do exist). Still missing tabs though.
Man how the mighty have fallen. It’s rather sad actually
I’m using Niagara right now and I like it, pretty different though.
I’ve been using Niagara forever (since at least early 2019) and it is different, but it really works for me. I’ve tried to use other launchers from time to time out of curiosity but keep coming back.
I like it, but their subscription or high price paid app model is not something I agree with.
At least they have written a long page explaining their motivation with it, but this is still way more than I would ever pay for a launcher on my phone.
I want to make a homescreen for plasma-mobile that mimics Niagara I love it so much.
Niagara is amazing. Strong recommendation
