I bought and paid for Nova Launcher like 15 years ago and it’s been my go-to for that time; however, over the last year or so it’s been abandoned and is a buggy mess.
What ship should I jump onto? (stock google launcher is giving me the ick)
Lawnchair
Will check it out, thank you!
Heard a lot of praise for it and tried to test it the other day, but noped right back out when just trying to create a folder in the dock was horribly buggy and repeatedly resulted in having a duplicate of one of the app icons in it showing on the home screen, weirdly overlapping the “at a glance” widget, and when I tried to fix it the folder just disappeared. Not sure if I was doing something wrong, but that wasn’t very confidence inspiring. Stock Pixel 7, so it’s not like I’m using a particularly unusual setup either
Sounds like my experience so you’re not alone. Tried it on both a Pixel 8 Pro and P10 Pro XL. Its foundation is good, but it needs a lot of polishing.
I love KISS.
I change the settings to set swipes for common apps like browser and camera, set others as favorites like email and messaging apps, and then set it to show nothing else except the search bar. Tapping the search bar shows commonly used apps, or you can a search.
Works great for my “workflow”, and leaves the “desktop” almost completely clear. Then I have the wallpaper set to the NASA astronomy picture of the day. Works great!
Awesome! will check it out, thank you for the suggestion!
A warning, it’s different from a normal launcher. That’s why I love it!
Same. I’ve been using KISS for years. It would feel weird to use anything else at this point.
I use KISS but with the Launchy widget as well and it works great.
Interesting! Do you (or anyone) know of any similar one that’s FOSS and available outside of Google Play?
Afraid not 😔. If you find anything please let me know
I agree, KISS on minimal mode for me.
Stock GrapheneOS
I used to spend a lot of time configuring different launchers (including Nova Launcher) but since I’ve switched to GrapheneOS, I’m actually quite happy with the stock launcher. It has everything I need — multiple home screens, widgets, folders. And I use App Search as dedicated search and secondary launch app that I’ve set up as digital assistant for gesture invocation.
Niagara. It’s simple and clean. All I need is an app drawer and a few favorites, and that’s basically what it provides.
Same here. It’s very smooth. I wish there were a few other customization points, I’d rather use my own weather app than the built in one, and I do, but then end up with different forecasts as they use different sources.
Minor complaints, but still a little friction that could be solved.
They actually fixed my minor complaint which was allowing folders on the home screen so big props to Niagara for that one.
Agreed. They have steadily added new features that don’t bloat the experience. It’s just a little too constrained for my tastes, but the rest of the Polish makes up for it.
Same one I’ve been using for the past… 14 years? Smart Launcher. Great UI, and means when I get a new phone I don’t need to learn a new UI :D
I switched to Smart Launcher because it was the only one I found that mentioned being able to import my Nova backup. The transfer wasn’t perfect, but extremely good.
Yeah, it was my second smart phone ever, and my first android (first was an iPhone 4s that my grandmother got me. I very much did not want it, and told her as much before she got it), so I didn’t have a previous launcher. Just tried like 10 of them, and liked SL more than any of the others I’d tried. I think Nova was in that lot xD
kvaesito, I switched from nova a few months ago and I’m loving it.
This is my choice as well. I like Niagara but the different way they do widgets I just can never get. KISS launcher is being true to its namesake, and I like most of it.
Kvaesitso is like a mixture of both to me. It doesn’t have the notification style of Niagara, but it’s simple in a different flavor to both Niagara and KISS.
I can get a clean home page like KISS with just a clock widget.
Swipe left and I get the app drawer with search bar focused (you can turn it off). On top of the drawer you can pin favorite apps and even shortcuts, as well as let it populate with your most used apps automatically.
Swipe up from home you get a dedicated vertically scrolling widget page. The built in default widgets are useful but it’s easy to add more. Downside is the widgets only stack vertically.
I’m just a bit irritated with the gestures to open the notification panel and quick access tiles because it uses accessibility system, and that freaks my bank apps to no end.
Niagara, nice simple clean
Surprised I had to scroll this far for a Niagara recommendation. Been on it since Nova sale and it’s fantastic
Niagra is the bees knees
Lawnchair. An improved Launcher3 that I use in place of Lineage’s built-in launcher.
I don’t really like text-only “simple” launchers as the icons help with quickly figuring out what app does what. Some of the features the AOSP Launcher3 lacks are present in Lawnchair/(mainly more customization over existing features).
I tried Lawnchair the other day and found it severely lacking.
Lawnchair
I’ve been trying different text launchers for a while, Olauncher has been pretty stable.
Nova got sold and now it’s a tracking-laiden pos. That’s why is gone terrible.
Niagara at the moment. There’s a lot I’d change about it but it’s the best I’ve spent the time to learn the ins and outs of so far.
It’s so good. Cuts out so much crap.
I also recommend Niagara, it’s an excellent launcher
A search-focused, free and open source launcher for Android
Another Kvae user I see.
What does a launcher do, what can a non-default one do (or not do) that warrents the effort to not just use whatever the default is?
Using a non-default launcher gives you more options to customise your home screen and any other screens off to the side.
For example, Pixels always have the Google search bar right there on the home screen, and it’s not removable (or not last I checked). But what if I don’t want it there? A 3rd party launcher will usually give me that option.
Or another example - some launchers allow the use of gestures to activate certain things, eg open app A, start an email in app B, call a specific contact, etc. This can be gestures on empty parts of the screen or swipes on icons.
On my phone, on which I use Total Launcher, it looks like this:
Tapping each of those 12 icons opens a folder. But I can also swipe each folder icon up, down, left or right and have certain apps or activities open without ever needing to go into the app drawer.
So, if I want to make a call, I swipe left on the communications folder (top right). If I want to open Lemmy, I swipe right on the Internet folder (blue, bottom row). If I want to open my phone settings, I swipe up on the Tools folder. And so on.
That way, I can activate 48 different things while only having 12 icons on screen, keeping it quite neat and tidy, and leaving space for my little collection of widgets at the top.
Gotcha, thanks!
No problem 👍
My college self would be ecstatic with Total launcher. I just don’t find the joy of tweaking all the options total have nowadays
Your set up looks amazing.
Thanks! 😁
Yeah, I doubt I’d go to all the trouble if I was starting from scratch now. But this is more or less what I had back when Nova was king, and I’ve just replicated it because of muscle memory!
Smart Launcher gang checking in. I am also a Nova Launcher refugee, and I found that Smart Launcher had similar features and ease of use.
