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Does anyone know of a FOSS launcher that actually does the one thing from Nova I haven't been able to see anyone replicate: empty pages
No I don't want you to automatically delete my pages when I delete all the icons from a page— I have a KLWP I built with the page count in mind.
It seems like such an easy thing that I have such a hard time finding.
I just want an app drawer and two empty pages.
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.
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!
They got a new owner years ago. No one should still be using it. Lawnchair has been great for me.
Holy shit the screenshots on Play store are depressing
You want to use one of the much more recent nightly or beta builds.
Can you remove the search bar at the bottom of the home screen?
I used to use lawnchair. Good reason to switch back.
I ducked off the Nova train with their fishy new owners a few months ago. My one complaint about Lawnchair is that the search function is slower and less effective, otherwise it's great!
Once again the "Everything that's not FOSS will turn to shit at one point or another" theorem proves true.
And if a FOSS project turns into shit a fork will come up.
One perfect example was simple apps acquisition. New owners turned it a ad ridden mess, fossify apps fork came to the rescue.
Yeah but foss has its own problems. Mainly financing. People are expected to work for free on most open source projects, and some do because they enjoy it. I do that myself too. Its fun.
But foss doesnt create products that require a lot of funding to get off the ground.
I'm getting really tired of companies pissing all over my name!
time to go super...
It already had a new owner which is why I stopped using it years ago.
Up until today I was happy with turning off updates (as a precaution) and restricting Nova's internet access (all phone network access is proxied through Rethink+), but this made me switch to Lawnchair and leave a 1-star review for both the free version and the paid upgrade token.
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.
Thats why you want open source software, its the only software you can trust, its the only software that won't fuck you over
Ahh sonofabitch! It's already updated for me and there is no changelog. Turned off auto update.
Edit: and uninstalled. Lawnchair FTW.
You should really not have automatic updates on. Aside from the fact that you also should have moved away from Nova years ago when Branch first acquired them.
This used to be my favorite piece of software I paid for. Then..... 💩
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.
Understand where the thought comes from, but do you know what zero days are
No one is going to waste a zero day on a random guy using Nova launcher. Zero days are used against governments & other militaries.
I just switched to Octopi. For me, it's an almost perfect replacement. Plus it's a local developer.
Wow, I got scared, I thought that was the one I'm using but I switched to Niagara Launcher long ago
On 3, 2, 1,.... Everybody Juuuuuuump to any other good launchers
I like this one https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/
This is what I'm using too. Was a little different, but simple enough, out of the way enough and easy too. Goldilocks zone launcher
But I don't wanna redesign my nice app tray and home screen. Can I just never update it?
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
Fuck. I bought this forever ago, either for my Droid 2 or my Galaxy S3. Skipped it on my first Pixel and came back on the Pixel 7.
Haven't really heard any talk about it, didn't know about the owner/dev drama until seeing some comments here.
Haven't noticed any ads myself yet, but maybe that's a "coming soon" thing.
Time to go launcher shopping again. This thread mentioned Lawnchair and Niagara, so I'll check those out first.
Don't forget to leave a bad review before uninstalling it.
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
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.
I'm not familiar with Nova launcher, it seems to have some USPs to it.
But these days I always recommend Lawnchair. It's built on top of the Pixel launcher, which in itself is a very good launcher IMHO, and refines it to be more customizable.
