Long time Nova user, trying out others now because the Pixel launcher is too boring.
Niagara for a scaled down ui. 8 apps on the home screen, rest is in a super easy to reach list on the edges of the screen. Currently on day 3 and liking it. Paid version is either €12 a year or €40 lifetime. Basically all the flashy stuff you see of it is locked behind the paywall.
Hyperion is good, pretty close Nova relative. UX needs tweaking. Dock and home screen are completely separated so you can open a folder in the dock and one on the home screen at the same time. Minor things like that.
Octopi I did a quick review of on the other site. Tl;dr navigation / interaction is kinda laggy (gestures, tapping, moving things), doesn’t have google feed integration but customization is top tier, better than nova imo. I left it because of the interaction issues.
Smart Launcher is built around a search function. Not my thing so I moved on quickly. UI/UX is good though.
Is there something wrong with the Nova Launcher that I should know about?
TL;DR: Sold off, dev team was (figuratively) slaughtered, OG dev is pretty much out of the picture, new owner is planning on injecting ads into the launcher and we basically know nothing else about the future of it. I.e they’re turning it into a cash grab.
Kvaesitso is really nice ! And it’s open source
I really like octopi launcher
Lawnchair
Dragon Launcher. You’d be surprised of how well Radial menus actually work with touchscreens. It’s great, you don’t want to go back afterwards.
Edit: radial
Removed by mod
wtf
Report and block. All that account does is spam porn.
Yep
Removed by mod
I use Pie Launcher on mine, but then again i am a bit strange at times.
Here is how it looks like for me.
You should be using PieFed with the Pie launcher.
That’s awesome I hate it
Bruh what the fever dream fuck!? Am I a fuckin normie or can someone back me on that being extra af?
Cool though
bring back USB3.0/DP out on the FP7 and I’ll bite. The FP6 going to USB2.0 screwed the pooch for me.
Want kind of use cases do you have for your phone that that’s relevant? Sure it’s nice to have, but I can’t even remember when I last moved files to/from my phone
As another commenter said, seedvault is a huge part of it. That, and when I am taking video to upload somewhere, it would take forever to transfer a 20-120 minute 4k file.
And file transfer isnt the only reason. Android 16/17 are bringing desktop docking features, and thats s feature I’ve wanted on phones since Android 8. I have a device with DP out now, and as someone who owns a dock its a game changer for events where I need to display to something fast. I can’t wait for it to be a fully fleshed out DE. (Not to mention the fact that Chromecast is a shitty format that my is doesnt even support)
Me too but mostly because it’s kind of awkward
KDE connect solved that issue for me nicely haha
Fast Seedvault offline backups. Say you’re traveling and wanna backup your phone to a fast usb ssd, or you need to transfer everything to another phone without Internet
Fairphone is nice. Flashed /e/os on it, now its even without 99% google shit :D
I use lineageOS personnally and you can install it without any google apps as well. And the updates are quite frequent.
Had LineageOS on it previously, but the official support of e/os means automatic updates.
Have you had issues receiving group messages on e/OS? RCS is borked but I figured that would be the case. Not getting group texts is a problem though and I’ve tried every solution I can find but nothing seems to work.
Can’t tell as I don’t use RCS.
No SMS or MMS either?
yeah… my family is sadly a whatsapp family :/
Ah fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
I wish they were sold in the States at a more reasonable price. Murena’s prices are ridiculous.
Yeah it’s pricey. I’m on a fairphone 4 and that was easily over $700. I have at the same time had a very easy time replacing the screen when it broke, and have just stashed several of the more breakable components, which it’s nice that I can do that super simply.
I don’t think fairphones are much cheaper from fairphone directly, though I might be wrong. Overall, I don’t game on my phone, and the fairphone 4 has been able to tackle all my needs pretty well without issue. Most of my gripes come from minor glitches or certain features lacked in lineageOS, but tbf, it’s still a very solid OS despite those minor issues.
Tariffs go brrrrr
(Good luck friend, I hope the price drops soon or that you find a good alternative :D )
Check out lawnchair. 😊
Digging it so far
Enshittification - Migration
appears to be a perpetual cycle. Stop giving Joe Rogan your $12 each month and your email provider announces it’s agenda to gargle MAGA balls… Now, all we need is an open source alternative to US healthcare…
Highjacking your comment to ask generally: Is there an easy way in lawnchair to put my apps into folders in the
dockdrawer? Going through settings is kind of tedious and the automatic caddy thing puts half of them into some catch-all category because it can’t identify their purpose.That’s so far the only thing that I find annoying about lawnchair. Nova spoilt me because it made that part so easy.
I’ve also not found a way to arrange my widgets without padding between them. That’s a bit unfortunate because it means my todo list doesn’t fit next to my calendar anymore but I can deal with that.
Do you mean dock or drawer? edit:
- Dock can be done by just dragging app untop of other app.
- Drawer can be done in settings:app drawer:folders
Sorry, meant drawer, had a brainfart. I know how to do it, but it’s more steps than in Nova and my lazy whiney monkey brain doesn’t like that :)
Yeeah it’s kinda unintuitive, and on several occasions have apps been removed from folders on my device after they had received an update. Still a great launcher overall. 😊
Based.
posted from my Fairphone 5
I wish they’d get their security in order.
It would be the perfect Graphene phone if they did.
To answer OP, Niagara Launcher.
Try out Niagara. It only takes about 5 minutes to set up.
If you’re like me, you’ll think it’s too simplistic, you think you want all that nova launcher shit. But do yourself a favor and give it a try. Pick a background, pick an icon pack, select a few favorites and that’s all you need to try it out.
After that if you want to really dig in there isn’t much (some of these things are pro features, I can’t remember which because I decided to get it so soon after trying it out), it’s like 45 minutes at the most to customize your clock, do the custom widget (multiple widgets can share space, you just swipe through), decide if you want music controls on the home screen, and set up pop-ups (like a folder but more, can be in your favorites or your app list), and hide apps from the list (either because they’re in a pop-up or you just never use it). And then…that’s it, there’s nothing else to do.
I tried it out a while ago when the original developer for nova quit the company that bought nova. Did a quick setup, played around for 30 minutes and bought pro right away. I was very surprised at how much I liked a simplistic launcher.
You’ve got nothing to lose but 30 minutes, check it out.
Edited for clarity about the nova developer quitting.
Their privacy policy says they collect a list of every app you have installed lol
You can turn it off. It tells you what might get funky if you do. I didn’t notice any problems so I’ve left it and all other analytics reporting stuff off.
+1 for Niagara. I’ve been using it for quite some time, and I love the simplicity of it. No clutter and just a quick launcher. I have a widget stack for my calendar, tasks, and Firefox search.
Every setting is locked behind premium…
Also I missed my drawer. I’ll just keep never updating nova
