PSA: Nova Launcher has been owned by analytics company Branch since 2022
Hopefully, this isn’t the end of an era for Android launchers
Since a few folks seem unaware of this, I'm posting anew for visibility.
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It was unfortunate, but not unexpected. Neo Launcher is a decent alternative, though it's not quite on par with Nova, and their development has been very slow the last year. Benefit of GrapheneOS, I can just disable Nova's network access, so I don't really have to compromise here thankfully.
Just checked the app on my phone, 0 bites used, I don't really think they get any live data from it.
Not yet. Nova Launcher 8 is the problem version and it's still in beta. If you're still using version 7, particularly 7.0.57, then it's the version from before the buyout and it's clean. It's suspected they turned some analytics on with 7.0.58, but even that still looks clean to me. That is the only update they've pushed since the buyout.
My guess is they didn't want to fuck with the current version, they just wanted to devote their focus to getting all the tracking shit into the upcoming major release.
If you disable auto updates now, you'll probably be fine until it stops working
Nova 8 shows 0 bytes used with error and usage reporting toggled off in advanced settings, so it seems they respect that setting.
Making guesses when you don't have any actual information makes you look like a fool.
I've disabled network access to Nova on a stock Android phone with NetGuard https://netguard.me/
And if you worry about how to update NetGuard automatically you can do it with Obtainium
I quite like Neo/Omega launcher, it's probably the best FOSS launcher I've found.
their development has been very slow the last year
This is the painful part. There are regressions that have been introduced which have sat their for years, and I've got no idea if they'll ever be fixed. But such is the open source way, they owe me nothing and are still providing a generally good experience for free!
