We already know it went to shit, I’m sure everyone here and on Reddit already moved over to another launcher or stuck to the last good release for the time being. I think that’s enough Nova Launcher news.
I don’t even see what it’s appeal is, it looks like any other launcher. Why do y’all care so much?
I switched away from it only recently. There is nothing else that is as customizable, intuitive, and polished. My app drawer was organized with different pages. I used most of the built in gestures. When using an icon pack, it automatically rethemed the missing icons to a color scheme that matched. I use octopi now and I have had to download other apps to get a closer experience to what I was used to.
I’ve tried most of the other suggested launchers but they feel clunky or take longer to find what I need. It also takes a long time to tinker with a new launcher. I think it’s taken a few weeks for me to find something that works well enough and I still hope that Nova gets an open source fork.
Nova Launcher is no longer a launcher with ads. It’s not spyware and adware with a side serving of launcher. Anyone who continues to use it is either uninformed or an idiot.
now*
It’s pretty popular with GrapheneOS users because on GrapheneOS, you can install any app entirely without network permission, or disable the permission afterwards. It might be my favorite feature of GrapheneOS.
I personally use Lawnchair, and while I really like it, it has one big flaw - app drawer folders. It does have them, but you have to create and manage them in settings and it’s really slow and annoying. I have around 260 apps, and sorting them this way would be almost impossible.
I was looking into other launchers, including Nova, but then I found JINA. It’s an app drawer, not a launcher, and it has tons of features - nested folders, tags, filters… No in-app purchases or ads, even though it’s not FOSS. It’s ugly, but exactly what I needed.
And now the best part: Lawnchair has an option to open an app on the swipe up gesture instead of opening the drawer. That way I replaced it’s drawer with JINA without switching to another launcher like Nova.
blocking network per app is also possible on lineageos

I disabled updates on Nova for the time being but I really need to setup and install a new launcher




