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)
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Lawnchair
I also used Nova until recently. In a similar post I saw that someone mentioned Octopi Launcher, and I liked it so far. Some features that I liked in Nova are missing, but apart from that, I find it to be a good replacement for now.
TLDR: Octopi Launcher
…Microsoft Launcher.
It does what I want, has no ads and basically is so smooth I forget I even have a custom launcher installed.
Microsoft was the only launcher I found that has the feature to swipe up on an app icon to launch a shortcut. Nova had swipe up or down that I used to launch different apps.
Smart Launcher will allow you to swipe up, down, left, and right to launch shortcuts.
The paid version will also allow you to use icons to open widgets in a pop-up.
Lawnchair
Though it is a bit buggy for me.
A search-focused, free and open source launcher for Android
Another Kvae user I see.
Been using the Fossify suite for a while. The Fossify Launcher works well enough.
What ever comes pre-installed on the device. I stopped caring around the time when they stopped making cool new smarphones. It has became just a tool since.
What is an android launcher?
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.
AIO Launcher It’s something different
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
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
Will check it out, thank you!
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.
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.
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?
