Uninstalled within seconds. I’m trialling Hyperion launcher now, which seems pretty crisp.
I’m on one of the last versions from before the acquisition (8.1.1) and intend to use it for as long as I can while searching for alternatives. Thankfully my Prime key still works (email one, not Play Store), maybe the checks are hardcoded in some way.
What I’m thinking now is to get the APK and self-sign it as a way to prevent Play Store from auto updating it. I’m with a non-rooted device, this seems to be about the only way I have. I have already unchecked the auto update for it, but it still appears in the update list, and if I tap “Update all”, it would update. Does anyone have experience with this?
On the subject of android launchers, I gotta advertise: https://github.com/RoBoT095/win95_launcher
Made it in two days, released yesterday, still needs work but I want to know what people think of it.
EDIT: here is an image of it
Hey, me too! I tried a couple of other ones I saw here like lawnchair and Niagara but I think Hyperion is the closest so far. I miss the side slide drawer, I hate scrolling down, but other than that its pretty close.
I had nova for so long too, I hate this shit.
When I first saw this I thought it was one of the “intentional bad design” images that are common on Lemmy. I am disappointed.
This is amazing. What is it from?
Ready Player One (2018)
Nova sold to shitheels, I switched to Lawn Chair a customizable FOSS Launcher
Lawn Chair looks ok, but unless they fix this issue I will not switch.
https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/issues/2683
Basically you can’t set the main “home page”, ie where you end up on home press. I like to have it set up so the home is in the middle and then you can swipe left to go to another screen(s), and swipe right to go to other screen(s).
Forcing the home screen to be the first means you can only swipe right, and have to go through many useless screens to get to the one you want.
Doubt they will fix it either, as it has been open since 2022. Without knowing their stack it sounds like a really simple fix, just storw which is the main screen. Normally it is [1], 2, 3, 4. But let the user choose to put it as [3] for example if they want.
I’ve switched, but this really is my one major gripe. Good to see others see it as a priority too, but if it’s been a conversation for 4 years then I’m not optimistic
Without knowing their stack it sounds like a really simple fix, just storw which is the main screen.
Soooo… if it’s simple… contribute then?
I’ve learned an app’s stack for far more mundane things. If you want others to build something you want, it helps to build things other’s want. Sounds like there would be a lot of interest if you took this on.
They recently started on wraparound homescreens (still a little buggy), so that might indicate they could soon add it. Still waiting on a way to remive widget paddings. In general lawnchair has so much more padding than nova, and not enough customizability to remove it.
and have to go through many useless screens to get to the one you want.
Two things.
Clean your shit up and prioritize. Everything I could ever dream of is on one screen.
Second, it’s foss. Contribute.
Or, hear me out, solve this trivial problem by reintroducing what has been a basic feature of launchers forever.
Has it though? I can’t say I’ve ever seen it, and I go out of my way to look at settings for everything
It makes sense to have it, but what is one thumb movement really? After once, the benefit goes away. And even then, it’s literally a thumb movement, and it’s to access something that you use so little, that you’ve put out of the way. You’re saving like a swipe a year at that point. I’d deprioritize the fuck out of this
What an odd hill to die on. Honestly I’d deprioritize the fuck out of this
They hate when I say it, and love when you say it lmao
Classic “the product/UX doesn’t need fixing, you’re just using it wrong” mentality. Not exactly how you win users on your side.
Second, it’s foss. Contribute.
Agree on this point though
I like having home on 3.
Only a calendar widget on 2 (one swipe left), so you get a quick glance of upcoming events. Then two swipes left are various games. One swipe right are various overflow apps from the main screen.
People use software differently, just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean it is wrong.
Like I said, I understand it, but I’d deprioritize it
PR welcome. Either by you, or by paying a dev to do it.
What am PR
Lawn Chair is so good
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’ve liked lawnchair better than Nova since it was in a pre-release state years ago. I admit I haven’t used either in at least 5 years, probably longer, so this opinion might be grossly out of date, but when I last tried it I was 90% convinced that it was just the KitKat aosp launcher with a material skin. It just felt clunky. Lawnchair actually felt native to newer android versions while still having all the customizations I needed.
Again, I haven’t used either launcher in forever, so take this whole thing with an agricultural block of salt
HHHGHHHGGHHGHHHHMMMMM.
HgMPH.
(Cow noises for you city folk)
I just tried Lawn Chair. Started building my home screen by adding two games to a folder. It dropped the second game right on my home page as well as adding it to a folder. Then, when I tried to remove the duplicate, it crashed.
I’m guessing this is not at all typical and this is a “me” problem, otherwise nobody would ever recommend it. :P
Uff I installed it last week but I haven’t had the time to customize it and add all my shortcuts so I’m still using Nova. I definitely need to change it tomorrow
Plug for open source launchers like Lawnchair
I just checked out the website and I’m having a hard time understanding what the point of it is. I’ve never installed any sort of custom launcher, so maybe I’m missing out, but the application advertises itself on being very similar to the regular pixel launcher, not needing root access, and nothing else. Even in the FAQ I only see that it supports some plugin that upgrades some widget, unless you have root where it supports whatever you can do with the “recents api”. Neither of those seem remotely worth it. So what does it actually do?
how did you end up in this thread if you don’t already know what a launcher is?
Let’s try a metaphor. Say I have a bike. Someone’s trying to sell me another bike, based on it having two wheels, both compatible with standard tubes, and optionally having a luggage rack, if I bring my own and attach it. Then I would also be asking them what their bike actually does and why I should bother swapping mine out for theirs, because it just looks like an extremely standard bike. It doesn’t mean I do not know what a bike is.
The question about lawnchair specifically has mostly been answered by comments now, but the website still does a very poor job explaining what it does over any other launcher, especially compared to the stock one.
I haven’t used the pixel launcher in ages, but last time I did, you could not remove the “search bar”. That alone justifies a different launcher to me.
You can certainly do that now. Main reason I went with it.
So what does it actually do?
It replaces the launcher (“desktop”) of your phone with something else. Maybe something faster, or using less resources, or something you can customize to your taste.
The main thing for me, it gets google out of the picture. No AI, no google search bar, etc.
It also allows me to manage apps in the app drawer. I can hide any stock apps, and put less commonly uses apps in to folders (I miss tabs on Nova). Instead of scrolling through pages of home screen, I swipe up and can see all my common apps at once, no scrolling. The home screen now has free space for widgets.
By default it does look similar. However it has customization options comparable to Nova, or at least I was able to easily replicate how I’d configured it.
Sure, but what are those? Maybe I’m the issue, but the website seems to be made for people who are already intimately familiar with the possibilities of a custom launcher, because they’re hardly listed anywhere, there’s no list of features or anything.
Well, there is one list, but it’s
- “Pixel design, but more customizable somehow” How? Dunno, isn’t explained
- “The latest android features” which is cool but also something I have on my stock launcher
- “QuickSwitch support” which is not explained (some research makes me believe it’s API access to the default launcher that’s needed to show recent applications, which is also a feature my native launcher has) and needs root according to the FAQ. So can I not access my recent applications if my phone isn’t rooted?
And the wiki is just from the dev side, which is interesting, but doesn’t provide the proper info. I’m sure it’s cool if so many people here like it, but the website’s doing a poor job at showing that off.
Edit: Basically it seems to me like the selling points of most Android forks, which are generally “We’re slightly worse in some areas, but generally have feature-parity, possibly slightly better customization/settings, and you’re free of Google spyware” which is admittedly a selling point, but here you don’t even get rid of spyware if you’re on regular Android, and if you are already on a fork, then why bother?
You can change the icon pack, font, grid size, colours, etc all to your preference.
I would suggest simply installing it to see if you like it, or remove it if you don’t. Customization is not something easy to describe without listing menu items
I switched to Lawnchair when Google starting messing with the search bar. They added features right where my thumb would press to use the search bar, so I was constantly opening an AI search that I did not want. Lawnchair let me stick with a launcher I liked and was used to, but gave me the customizability to get rid of bullshit like that.
And I generally don’t like change, and I certainly don’t want to have to do any work to facilitate a change that I don’t like in the first place, but Lawnchair was incredibly easy to set up and go. Runs basically like an app, you change your default launcher to Lawnchair (and I assume this step is similar for any launcher you’d use), and bam, runs on top of everything and that’s that. Simplicity is key for a simple guy like me.
I have to imagine that anybody savvy enough to make the decision to install a third-party launcher is also savvy enough to immediately uninstall that shit.
It pops up just like a gravestone. Bye bye Nova launcher. I guess apps don’t die, they rot from enshitification.
nova was good many years ago. iirc they got bought by an advertising company, and that was the day i deleted it.
Ive been using the FOSS launcher Kvaesitso for about a year now due to annoyances with Nova. It’s a different setup entirely, but I always preferred the app drawer over having scattered icons on the homescreen so its worked great for me. Anyone interested in trying something new should check it out. :)
That’s what I’ve been using, but I still prefer Nova’s ability to create folders, I could open most apps I needed in an instant by sliding to the correct screen, opening the folder and tapping the app. With Kvaesitso even with categories and such it’s much more of a hassle, the fastest way is typing the first letters of the name, not the same.
My biggest gripe with other similar launchers that can also create folders is that they always have an icon with 4 miniature icons on the cover. I wish that another one would give you the option of showing them as stacked instead. It just looks much less cluttered to me that way. I’m just glad I purchased the premium version before Nova got sold off, no ads (so far anyway).
I made pseudo folders by applying tags to apps I wanted to group, gave that tag an emoji, added a few app boxes to the widget page, and added the tags I wanted quick access to into those app boxes. Result looks like this.
Ok, that’s fucking genius
I disabled the automatic search on mine. So opening the app drawer doesnt automatically prompt searching.
I just open the app drawer by sliding up from the bottom and tap the app I want to open. I set the favorites section with everything I need most often. And the 5 apps on the dock home screen dock for my absolute most frequent apps. Most apps that aren’t in either of those sections are ones I rarely open anyway.
My often used apps are numerous, and there are a few that are not often used but by their nature need to be opened quickly when necessary (such as the camera or qr scanner)… Plus I like to have a monthly calendar and clock on my home screen, those take up quite some space.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
!
I used Nova for as long as it’s been a thing. Paid for pro. Abandoned it immediately after they released the news a few weeks ago about the tracking and ads.
I switched to Octopi Launcher. It’s really good, and in active development. Author listens to his users and is always adding fun new features.
+1 for Octopi launcher. Very nice.
