I finally gave up on Nova Launcher after watching the various "calls home" its doing now after the acquisition by analytics company Branch. I held out for probably way too long considering the way things were inevitably going to go. I've tried Kvaesitso, KISS, and Neo Launcher so far. There are a couple of features I really miss from Nova that I thought I'd check to see if anyone knows of a workaround or a launcher that has these features:
App Drawer shortcut
Ability to remove browser badge from PWA and browser shortcuts added to homescreen
And lastly, while I don't have a photo example, pull to search in app drawer. This is the same gesture used in most mobile browsers to refresh the current page, if that makes sense.
I'm aware that the road to degoogle is paved with compromises, and I'm willing to make them if I need to. But if there are options out there, I haven't found them. Thoughts?
Not sure about your asks specifically but give smartlauncher a try. Even though it has a PAID version I've used the free version for like a decade.