Comment by herrherrmann

19 days ago

Ugh, quite annoying. My next phone might be an Android (instead of the current iPhone), and I was looking forward to returning to Nova Launcher, after having used it many years ago as my favorite launcher. This feels like a big no-go now.

What are other good customizable launchers on Android nowadays?

14 comments

herrherrmann

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turbocon  19 days ago

Much less popular but I switched to Kvaesitso from Nova about a month ago and it's been amazing and it's open source. Much more opinionated than Nova but it matched how I used Nova so I really enjoy it.

[1] https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/

bastard_op  19 days ago

I've been using lawnchair as a launcher that is open source (apache) since the first news broke months when the previous dev/owner warned people what was coming, and it works just fine. Not quite as versatile as Nova Launcher, but with 100% less adware now that the new adware company is running up in people with a bait and switch.

Enshittification is real!

pteraspidomorph  18 days ago

I used Nova for years and went through this research before, having tested many alternatives. Octopi is what you're looking for. It can do pretty much everything Nova did for me and more besides. They also update often with improvements and fixes!

Markoff  18 days ago

Lawnchair newest beta, though they still didnt fix years old bug with dark/black font on dark/black background in folders/drawer

also resizing/padding widgets ain't as good as Nova, but for sure much better than Octopi which is completely weird, tried yesterday, chaotic settings, can't even disable background picture for dock

switched yesterday to Lawnchair from Nova after 10+ years, seems OK besides those few quirks, but still keeping Nova as backup, will see after 2 weeks testing how is the stability, if I can remove even nova backup

TheCraiggers  19 days ago

Depends what you want, I guess. The nice thing about Android is we still have many options.

I recently moved to AIO Launcher and I've been really enjoying it. I'm sure it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea though.

chroma_zone  19 days ago

I paid for "Square Home" a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it. It's highly customizable. The Windows Phone style layout probably isn't for everyone but it works well for me.

cfiggers  18 days ago

I know this is weird, but.......

I'm really happy with Microsoft Launcher.

  • trog  18 days ago

    Same! And I feel weird about it. The only issue I have is sometimes the task switcher hangs or fails and I can't easily switch tasks, but aside from that it ticks a lot of boxes.

    • cfiggers  18 days ago

      Yeah, I used to have an issue where it would repeatedly request accessibility permissions even though they were already granted. But I haven't seen that one in months and haven't noticed any other glitches or bugs whatsoever.

      I like how completely adjustable the home screen grid is (icon size, number of rows, number of columns, whether or not to allow sub-grid arrangement, whether to have vertical or horizontal page layout).

      I like the number of shortcut gestures available (tap home on home screen, swipe up/down, two finger swipe up/down, double tap, double tap + swipe up/down, pinch in/out), and that they're all completely remappable to launch any installed app, or installed app quick action, or trigger any of like a dozen launcher actions (like opening the app drawer, opening the notification shade, locking the screen, etc).

      I like how the dock can be swiped up to show a second (or, if you want, third or fourth etc) row of apps in like a "mini app drawer" just for things I use often and want there instead of picking a page where they live.

      I like the widgets that it ships with (I use the combo clock + weather one).

      I like that I can have the app drawer organize alphabetically (or not, if I wanted).

      I like that I can turn off pretty much anything that I don't want (the news feed page, especially, but also you can have almost any of the launcher UI elements hidden by default).

      And it's stable, has no ads, and nearly no pop-ups. It just lets me set what I want and then gets out of the way and works 99.9% of the time.

      It's just... It's Microsoft Launcher, is the only thing.

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯