Android @lemmy.world Dnew10 @lemmy.world 4 wk. ago

Nova Launcher faces uncertain future after the company Branch slashes its development team

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17 comments

Sadly this comes as no (big) surprise. Sharing the fate with many great projects from small dev teams, Nova was dead the moment it was bought up.
- I'm still running it, is there a decent alternative yet? Or even a good Foss one?
  
  I was wondering why it's always freezes on my home screen the last several months.
  
  I really like Niagara, though it is quite a bit different from Nova.
  
  Lawnchair V2 is also a thing outside of the Playstore.
- Hey, when it happened everyone was sure they'll develop it into an ad platform. Guess that didn't happen
- They always buy the brand or patents and that's all.
What are some good alternatives if it gets shut down? Preferably FOSS.
- Two best ones IMO are Lawnchair and Kvaesitso. I use the latter. Lawnchair works more like any normal launcher while Kvaesitso is more unique in the way it works.
- I've tried quite a few after leaving Nova a few years ago and have settled on Lawnchair. It seems to be the most stable and is under active development.
  
  is under active development.
  
  The latest release is from 2018 though? So they just refuse to call something "stable" and everyone has to pick between nightly and beta or something?
- I've been using KISS launcher off and on since Branch bought Nova. Not nearly as flexible when it comes to customization. But if you just want a simple launcher that supports stuff like custom icon packs it is a good one.
- I've been using Neo Launcher since nova was bought, its def doesn't have feature parity but it had everything I personally used from nova.
- I also use neo launcher
Nova what?

I honestly had to look it up because I don't use stuff that's not on F-Droid if I don't absolutely have to, so that one never entered my radar. I was surprised to see it has quite the sizeable fanbase.
- Nova in its heyday was just exceptional. It's so sad to see it brought almost to its knees.

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