For those still using Nova Launcher (custom launcher for Android), it seems that it's owned by a new company and the latest update comes with the Facebook Ads and Google AdMob SDKs and require extra permissions.
It's weird, I'm on 8.2.4 but it hasn't asked me for any new permissions. It did use mobile data last October but none this month. Is network access a permission? I only see "Phone" granted.
It may be because my aging phone is on Android 10, I auto-migrated Nova from an even older phone. Back then app drawers were in the free version, so after the migration I can't modify them (don't care, I didn't end up using that feature).
I've noticed that it retries some failed connections every minute, so while removing network access might fix the privacy side of things, it may have an impact on your battery life. Keep an eye on it.
The latest version keeps retrying some failed connections. It's only Firebase, but it seems to be almost every minute. Not good for the battery life, I assume.
No idea about old versions, but something to be aware of.
Do older versions of Nova have any security flaws which preclude using them?
I've been using this app for ages and it's been essentially feature-complete for several years. A part of me wants to switch launchers for no other reason than "it is supported and not tracking me", but it is possible for software to be finished, and I believe Nova falls into that category. If there's no meaningful vulnerabilities in it, there's really no reason for me to switch away, at least not immediately.
Well, that sucks. When the sale was announced, I tried several launchers, free and paid, and none of them were as good as Nova :/ Guess I’ll do another round.
For those out of the know, Nova Launcher is an Android home screen replacement... so hits home when the root of your phone existence gets shook piece by piece.
I initially thought that switching to a lighter launcher like Nova would make my phone-apps launching faster. However, I soon realized that what I actually needed was something to boost my productivity, so I switched to a launcher with fewer distractions, like Yantra Launcher (terminal-based), which I've been using ever since.
That sucks. I've been running the paid version for years - however it's clear that it hasn't been properly maintained for a while and it suffers from sporadic crashes.
Any recommendations for launchers that are functionally similar? The launchers mentioned in this thread so far are quite different.
I've used nova on every android I've had since it came out to current, and when the former owner/dev warned people, I switched to lawnchair and didn't look back. Sounded like shenanigans and time to pull the ripcord on nova. RIP (not in ad/malware)
There's so many suggestions here that you open up and it's just a buy screen with comment reviews like "oh dearest me, I was lost in the darkness and then I found salvation with this app"
I can't help but think there's a lot of devs here pushing their own products.
I mean this _is_ HN after all. That is the core mindset that is being pushed here.
Y Combinator is a startup accelerator.
It is just called "hacker" news because it's a nice sounding name. Not because it would actually be news for hackers nor because it would actually be culturally adjacent to hacker culture.
Though, those aforementioned hackers still do seem to occasionally hang out here regardless. Probably some weird case of masochism.
I was a 10+ year long Nova Launcher user and knew this day was coming after the sale and layoffs[0][1]...
This evening I at looked several replacement launchers, such as Lawnchair and even the stock Pixel launcher again, but Octopi Launcher[2] is the more modern, more refined Nova replacement that you are looking for.
It was a very easy, natural transition process from Nova - all of the Nova features that I used were there (unlike Lawnchair), such as swipe up/down on icons to perform different actions. And little things like folder options, icon placement, and widget handling are SO much nicer on Octopi compared to Nova. Staggeringly better.
I took a screenshot of each home screen page, set Octopi as the new default launcher, and was back to my previous configuration but with a significantly improved visual appearance, in about 15 minutes. It's a no-brainer upgrade from Nova.
The Google Play install is free and basically unlimited, but there is an unobtrusive "Buy Me A Coffee" type button that allows you to donate either $1 or $3 to unlock some eye candy, which I did, but mostly just wanting to support the developer.
Thank you for this!
I was really happy with one launcher that I configured probably 8-9 years ago and then moving to the new phone meant everything just worked (^tm ?) with normal phone porting.
Reading the headline made me freak out for 2 min. I really really do not like UI muscle memory being changed for something like my phone.
What is your experience from a performance perspective? Nova Launcher was pretty light on that front, I'm using smart launcher since a few months and it is ok but Nova was lighter.
Meh. I installed Octopi, but it's like death by a thousand cuts. The dock looks like hot garbage when you flip to landscape mode--it ends up taking up like 60% of the screen. I don't know why it doesn't just switch to vertical mode the way Nova did.
Lack of being able to name the folders is also an annoyance, as is the way the folder icons pop out to the side from the dock rather than up-and-over.
I've spent about 10 mins seeing if I can replicate my Nova setup with Octopi. My only missing feature so far is more extensive gesture support. As far as I can tell, Octopi supports a max of five actions, and you can't change the gestures for them. They seem to be hardcoded to "swipe up", "swipe down", "swipe right from first screen", "double tap" and "tap home (icon)". If I could change the gesture for "swipe right from first screen" and "double tap" then I could almost perfectly recreate my Nova setup.
It's these discussions where I realize people use phones in such different ways.
I abandoned Nova last year when I read about this looming problem. I found that Fossify Launcher beta (from F-Droid) works well enough for me on my Pixel 8a.
I don't really need much out of a launcher. My main goal was to have one like my older Android and not be forced to have a search bar or assistant triggers on my home screen.
All I need from the home screen is to be able to place basic widgets like clock and calendar and shortcuts for the basic apps I use frequently. A plain app drawer is fine for the rest, because I don't really install that many apps and instead disable/remove many. My app drawer shows 35 apps and has several blank rows remaining on the first page with 5 icons per row.
What seems to be missing from every alternative I've seen is the power offered by the combo Nova+Sesame. I really don't use my launcher as a navigation system. All it does for me is pop open a search box after a swipe so I can type the name of the app I want to use, the contact I want to text or call, etc.
There seem to be other "search-first" launchers out there (KISS is one), but then they miss the amount of expected polish (unread/notification badges, leeway in letting you place random widgets on the background, etc). Still searching.
I tried some of these and decided on Smart Launcher [0] espescially because they had an "import settings from Nova" feature. AND their search is amazing--with a single search it looks at contacts, web search, apps, etc.
Bit of a sidenote, and I might be an exception here, but I don't get the point of all these launchers - they're all the same! Some might look a little better, some might have an option or two extra, but otherwise they're all the same. Mostly the same drawer, mostly the same panel for quick access.
Been using it for well over 15 years, and I have paid for Prime. But recently ~1-2 years, when it go acquired I was sad, but hopping it would go open source... maybe. But after today, I'm removing it from all of my devices, and all of my relatives devices. And leaving an updated review, so people know about this.
The original CEO who made that promise was kicked out, and the new one didn't care to follow it, supposedly in the dev's contract but not enough, since that didn't happen
Though tbh the writing has been on the wall for awhile. It's really frustrating, because it otherwise just gets out of your way, which is why I like it.
I guess I have to dedicate an afternoon to finding an alternative.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 79.2 ms ] thread8.1.6:
- Branch (analytics)
- Bugsnag (crash report)
8.2.4:
- Facebook Ads (advertisement)
- Google AdMob (advertisement)
- Branch (analytics)
- Bugsnag (crash reporting)
- Google CrashLytics (crash reporting)
- Google Firebase Analytics (analytics)
Thanks, Google.
It may be because my aging phone is on Android 10, I auto-migrated Nova from an even older phone. Back then app drawers were in the free version, so after the migration I can't modify them (don't care, I didn't end up using that feature).
Thanks for sharing.
If anyone knows of another launcher with app drawer tabs, let me know.
No idea about old versions, but something to be aware of.
I've been using this app for ages and it's been essentially feature-complete for several years. A part of me wants to switch launchers for no other reason than "it is supported and not tracking me", but it is possible for software to be finished, and I believe Nova falls into that category. If there's no meaningful vulnerabilities in it, there's really no reason for me to switch away, at least not immediately.
Damn these privacy-invading leeches.
The SDKs are also part of the app even if you paid for it, and there are reports on reddit of paid users seeing ads (that might be a bug, but still).
There's also the privacy side of this. It's not in my interest that my launcher sends data about me to Facebook/Meta.
Any recommendations for launchers that are functionally similar? The launchers mentioned in this thread so far are quite different.
I can't help but think there's a lot of devs here pushing their own products.
It is just called "hacker" news because it's a nice sounding name. Not because it would actually be news for hackers nor because it would actually be culturally adjacent to hacker culture.
Though, those aforementioned hackers still do seem to occasionally hang out here regardless. Probably some weird case of masochism.
This evening I at looked several replacement launchers, such as Lawnchair and even the stock Pixel launcher again, but Octopi Launcher[2] is the more modern, more refined Nova replacement that you are looking for.
It was a very easy, natural transition process from Nova - all of the Nova features that I used were there (unlike Lawnchair), such as swipe up/down on icons to perform different actions. And little things like folder options, icon placement, and widget handling are SO much nicer on Octopi compared to Nova. Staggeringly better.
I took a screenshot of each home screen page, set Octopi as the new default launcher, and was back to my previous configuration but with a significantly improved visual appearance, in about 15 minutes. It's a no-brainer upgrade from Nova.
The Google Play install is free and basically unlimited, but there is an unobtrusive "Buy Me A Coffee" type button that allows you to donate either $1 or $3 to unlock some eye candy, which I did, but mostly just wanting to support the developer.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45170000
[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/exclusive-cliff-wade-nova-laun...
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otp.octopi...
Lack of being able to name the folders is also an annoyance, as is the way the folder icons pop out to the side from the dock rather than up-and-over.
I abandoned Nova last year when I read about this looming problem. I found that Fossify Launcher beta (from F-Droid) works well enough for me on my Pixel 8a.
I don't really need much out of a launcher. My main goal was to have one like my older Android and not be forced to have a search bar or assistant triggers on my home screen.
All I need from the home screen is to be able to place basic widgets like clock and calendar and shortcuts for the basic apps I use frequently. A plain app drawer is fine for the rest, because I don't really install that many apps and instead disable/remove many. My app drawer shows 35 apps and has several blank rows remaining on the first page with 5 icons per row.
There seem to be other "search-first" launchers out there (KISS is one), but then they miss the amount of expected polish (unread/notification badges, leeway in letting you place random widgets on the background, etc). Still searching.
I tried some of these and decided on Smart Launcher [0] espescially because they had an "import settings from Nova" feature. AND their search is amazing--with a single search it looks at contacts, web search, apps, etc.
0 - https://www.smartlauncher.net/
Bit of a sidenote, and I might be an exception here, but I don't get the point of all these launchers - they're all the same! Some might look a little better, some might have an option or two extra, but otherwise they're all the same. Mostly the same drawer, mostly the same panel for quick access.
Time to start scoping out replacements, this thread is a great start
https://www.osnews.com/story/143297/nova-launchers-open-sour...
Though tbh the writing has been on the wall for awhile. It's really frustrating, because it otherwise just gets out of your way, which is why I like it.
I guess I have to dedicate an afternoon to finding an alternative.