End of an era: Nova Launcher's parent company lays off practically everyone
Layoffs have reduced the Nova Launcher from twelve members to just a single one man team. What does this mean for the launcher's future?
Branch Metrics sucks. They fired almost of all people working for Nova.
Bad news.
Still waiting for https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/releases to get out of beta
It's pretty much already very usable. I have been on version 12 alpha for a long time and now on 14 beta 2, all in all since nearly a year.
Seems like it is missing a lot of the conveniences that I was once used to with Nova, though. No ability to reposition the search bar or keep it in place on other pages, no docked apps, no button to open the app drawer, the home screen grid has fixed padding and so on.
I've since switched to Niagara which has been okay, but I've never found anything else like Nova since.
I've had it freeze up on me several times, where I had to reset the app to get it working again. It works most of the time, but I wouldn't recommend it yet for general use.
Lol development on it halts and resumes almost randomly, I've given up hope long ago.
Which really sucks as it's the only launcher to have QuickSwitch support AFAIK.
Development has been steady. 8 beta has been available with about monthly updates for a few years or some such, in official Nova Discord.
They launched the beta in play store recently as well. Been using the beta since they shared the first apk.
I've been using the 14 nightlies for months now, 0 issues. It's very nice and responsive.
Wait it's in Beta? I've been using it for like over a year
TotalLauncher has been a great replacement for me. Jumped ship a number of months ago
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
Immediately switches to google play to turn off auto update for Nova Launcher
yikes good thinking does the same
You are better served by switching to a different launcher.
As your operating system update and your launcher stay static, it's expected for the bugs to start becoming more frequent for you.
Here is some other launchers that you can switch to:
Open source:
Closed Source:
Why?
Meh. Nova is the best launcher in my opinion but I've already been version locked to the last release before this company bought it. I've basically given up in anyone else replicating the features I want. So I'll be using this version of Nova until Google finally breaks it.
Same! I refuse to update it and got a little annoyed at a post I saw where the dev (at least I think it was him) said "hey it's 1 year later and the world hasn't exploded". Found that a little annoying.
Let's hope he gets control of the app back and can do nova again, without this shit baked in.
Edit: guess I should have RTFA first. Gross
worse comes to worse someone writes a revanced patch to unlock premium
What version are you on? I'm on 7.0.58.
7.0.57. I've had no android issues with this version. I don't feel like I'm missing any features by refusing to update.
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
we were all scared that they would do data mining or introduce ads on the launcher. They promised that they wouldn't. Surprisingly, they kept the promise.
I'm surprised that could feed a team of 12 devs with a free app with small one time payment to unlock power features.
Isn't the app mature enough to have a just full time dev behind to keep it updated with api changes?
Branch is apparently a $4B Silicon Valley startup, that raised $300M just two years ago. They can afford Nova's team of twelve, or at least more than one fucking dev. They even fired Cliff, the one guy doing support (social, Discord, email, etc).
That said, I wish they wouldn't have sold out. Nova is one of the few things I want to subscribe to, very well earned. Nobody can reasonably complain about $10-20 per year for "Prime Ultra" or something. I don't even see a donate button in settings.
The reason Branch bought Nova is to use it for A/B testing and feedback (via Nova Discord), to test for things they could add in their other products.
One such feature is the new cards and search features. Nova doesn't spy on you and they didn't add ads, they just rely on the feedback given by the userbase.
Sadly they bow fired two employees whom, if I recall, handled support and PR. This means that the solo dev will have to do that too, which means slowdowns and less features in the future.
weird. who could have predicted a rug pull from an analytics and spyware company... lol.
if you get in bed with adtech vipers and don't anticipate problems, you're gullible as hell. if you don't stop them (or worse, if you let them) ad people will sell you, your soul, and your passion to the devil for a single penny.
It could be worse, like zipoapps that immediately ruined the simple mobile tools with ads and scammy weekly subscriptions
At least, for now, it looks like they acquired it for philanthropic reasons
What is the best replacement? I'll hold on to Nova as long as possible, but if for some reason they screw it in some way...
LawnChair is the best option I've tried that has a similar design to Nova.
I've tried at least a couple dozen launchers since Nova got bought. Most of them are either half-baked or have a very different design (e.g. based on radial menus or text-only lists). If you're into minimalism, there are a lot of good options. If you want a full-featured icon grid that behaves more or less like Nova, LawnChair is it.
I'm running LawnChair 14 Beta now. You can get it off the GitHub. Last I checked, the version on Google Play was very old.
Kvaesitso has risen to the top as my favorite launcher after trying a ton of launchers.
Gesundheit.
Same here and I don't even use the search that much. Love it
I've been using Neo Launcher for a while, no complaints
+1 for neo launcher
I've also been using it for a while but I do have complaints. They introduced a few minor bugs when it went from omega to neo and despite them being reported over a year ago they've not made any fixes since. I use it because it's alright and not spying on me, but I'm always on the lookout for an improvement.
I'm pretty happy with total launcher in combination with app search since I didn't like totals app drawer.
Edit: I just found OpenLauncher and I'm going to test that out.
I used Smart Launcher for a couple years. Functionally, it was on par, if not better, from my perspective
commenting to watch for replies, because there's about a million of them and i will probably never feel like doing research on launchers
I loved Nova, but a couple of years ago, I found AIO, and it just blew nova out of the water for me. I look around to see if anything better comes along, but so far, I've not seen anything that gets close to AIO for me. It is so customizable, everything on one vertical scrollable screen, email, notifications, calendar, apps, weather. I absolutely love it!
I like Action Launcher, it's simple and close to Pixel.
Discreet Launcher from F-Droid
This,kvaesito and lawnchair are the only true alternwtives, but they are pretty different from nova and conventional launchers. lawnchair is the closest to those.
Square home!
This is what mine looks like:
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
Fucking hell.
I've been using Nova for years, it's nice there are replacement recommendations on this thread.
It's a major switch in style but I've really been enjoying Niagara
Used to use Niagara, but now moved to Kvaesitso
People, calm down https://novalauncher.com/nova-aug-2024
For people who did not click the link:
The original Nova team, for many years, was just me. Eventually I added Cliff to handle customer support, and when Branch acquired Nova, Cliff continued with this role. I also had contracted Rob for some dev work prior to the Branch acquisition and some time after the acquisition closed we were able to bring him onboard as a contractor at Branch.
However, I've always been the lead and primary contributor to Nova Launcher and that hasn't changed. I will continue to control the direction and development of Nova Launcher.
This reminds me of my neighbor informing me, that he is leaving WhatsApp, because he heard somewhere that WhatsApp is going to give all of his chats to advertisers. He switched to Signal for about a month, found out that nobody is there and it's happily back on WhatsApp. All of this because WhatsApp allowed brands to store chats somewhere, the chats between the user and that specific brand. People often blow things out of proportion.
Nice catch! Thanks for calming things down
Dude, calm down
This basically means I'll ditch Samsung, because frankly their stock launcher sucks donkey balls.
I've been using Square Home on my samsung after I got bored with Nova and quite enjoy it
I'm still looking for a launcher similar to nova. The two big things I want are the swipe action on homescreen icons. For example I set the swipe up on my phone app to directly call someone. And I have the swipe up on other apps open a separate app instead. Other thing is being able to create folders of apps in the app drawer.
Same! Except I use swipe up to go to Google voice and swipe down to go to contacts.
Folders are also clutch. I don't want to search for my apps.
Aw man! I've used nova launcher for probably about a decade at this point :(
There's no way in hell I'm going back to SMASNUG's crusty launcher. What's the next best thing that isn't a beta test?
I like Lawnchair. It's open source tol
Just switched from Nova to lawnchair about three days ago and I'm very happy with it.
Stock Android with GrapheneOS :D
I stopped using it after it switched owner anyway
I'd heartily recommend Niagara Launcher to anyone that wants something a little different.
It's good if that's what you want, but it is completely different from nova
I'm using Niagara now for 3 months, and i couldn't be happier. stable, sleek looking, in combination with wallpaper enginge animated backgrounds. i find everything on my phone very fast and it never annoys me.
Yeah, I read about this on the Nova launcher discord community. I had already moved to Smart launcher in 2022, seeing the slow development speed and the branch buyout.
Still, seeing so many people being laid off was sad.
It sucks that people are laid off but I'm not shocked. I can't imagine the launcher raking in tons of cash. Maybe it does, but I wouldn't expect it to. Honestly I'm surprised that nova wasn't just a passion project by someone.
i'm still using nova (was a premium subscriber from before the sale) does anyone have anything compariable? mostly the ability to use legacy icons, scale the grid size, have multiple tabs and folders, hide icons, assign icons to multiple folders (and hopefully import nova launcher backups into a new place)?
i'm fine with google play though i'd love it if it was on fdroid or neo store.
I replaced Nova with Kvaesitso and honestly its pretty awesome.
Its more limited than Nova was but it meets my use cases. The biggest adjustment was using labels to filter things instead of using folders, which I've actually come to like better.
But plenty of customizations for everything else you mentioned and more.
hmm, as someone who was a long time del.icio.us user labels/tags sounds good
It's a subscription now? I paid $1 ten years ago or so
i dont think its a subscription. you can download it anytime but they have nova prime which has additional features for a one time cost
Btw i recommend kvaesitso. Idk what nova is like but kvaesitso is open source, has updates and is a very nice launcher in general. Its a bit hard to set-up at first because it uses widgets but after you figure it out its really nice.
I'm currently on it because Neo Launcher stopped working one day, but is there a way to have app icons on the home screen without them being in the dock? It fills up quickly if you use PWA's
No. You don't manually place apps on homescreen. I have it configured to only show one row of favorites, which are categorized as "pinned - manually sorted". Than the rest of my favorites are seen when i swipe to app drawer.
Did a recent update really break it for you? I've had to move over to square home at the moment.
I just reset my phone (because reasons) and while I was happy to use Nova for so many years, I decided to switch - trying ADW Launcher now.
Looks like it was a smart move.
I've been using Nova for a very long time. It has saved me all kinds of annoyance as I've switched phone brands and OS versions, since my basic UI has remained consistent.
Unless it actually takes a dive in quality, I will continue to use it, but this is disappointing news.
I looked for a new launcher when the sale was anounced a year ago and was sad to find no launvhers I can customize that much.
I went for Kvaesitso (https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso also on F-Droid) and stuck with it since. I really like the concept althought it might not be for everyone.
All I want is to remove the mandatory google search bar and calendar/weather widget at the top of the home screen on my pixel.
While alot of the third party launchers I've seen look cool and functional, in this case I would love just more simple one.
You might be interested in lawnchair. It's open source and based off the Google launcher (AFAIK) but you can remove the search bar and other things.
The one on f-droid is two versions out of date. Latest one is from their website:
Neo Launcher is the way. FOSS with all the same features as Nova.
You're posting this brief message a lot, so I googled it, and, no releases since October 2022? Only on f droid and is there really no way to pay other than PayPal donations? Am I looking at the right neo launcher?
Development isn't dead, but the lack of releases and fees (one time purchase, please) don't give me confidence.
I moved to lawnchair 2 beta (or whatever it is.) I liked neo but the promised release just never came. I kept having it crash and it always took a few seconds to restart.
Lawnchair has been reliable though even for a beta.
It's FOSS. It's pretty normal for it to be a passion project or a community effort.
And looks like alpha 1 hit the release page.
Dev seems close to next release, I put in a bug on searching with SearXNG and it was fixed the next day.
One time purchase?
It's a open source project, you can install it for free, but you could still donate.
As far as I can tell they are working on a new release.
Don't use it now, but you can follow their GitHub/ F-Droid to see when they get a new release.
Article mentions 3rd party launcher gesture issues, but I've never seen this problem. I used to use Nova but switched to Smart launcher for the blur, but at no time have gestures been an issue. Any ideas what they mean?
There's a known (assumed intentional) issue with Android where a gesture to go home will show the home screen, but nothing responds to touch for a half second. I've been using Nova for years and I experience it daily. I feel like the delay has gotten better, though.
I switched to KISS launcher after I knew the company had bought the project. Never came back.
There's a bug on samsungs (I think) where the home screen interface freezes, and the only way to unfreeze it is to relaunch Nova. It's super annoying. This probably means it will never be fixed.
The quickest way to fix it is to lock and unlock your phone by pressing the power button twice, but not too close together or you launch the camera.
Crap, I recently migrated to Nova because I was fed up with Action Launcher bugs and lack of development... If I knew I would not have bought a paid license
trebuchet is good enough for me
Missun Faiuled, we'll giet 'm neaxut tiume
Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time, last time I tried different launcher was maybe in 2015... I didn't know custom launcher were still popular. I try to use vanilla android
Huh. I didn't really need it on my Pixel but I remember using Nova on my old Sony tablet. I'm surprised it lived that long, since most mobile apps typically die within a few years.
On the plus side, #5 can relax at last.
Until Nova Launcher is removed from the Internet, I'll continue to use it. The original dev will continue to develop but at a slower pace...
Goodnight, sweet prince.
I mean I'm still gonna use nova launcher
Seems you probably still do a lot of things you shouldn't, and then openly boast unprompted as a badge of honor as if anyone cares, huh?
You cared enough to reply to me
