130
Ditch this shit yesterday.
The company that owns it now blows chunks. I'm using Lawnchair now and it was a bit of a transition but after a few days I got it set up just how I wanted.
Lawnchair has been very buggy for me, with animations freaking out and icons appearing and disappearing
Yeah the "stable" version is over 7 years old and the only other options are perpetual beta or nightly, both of which were unusably broken for me when I tried them a couple months ago.
I went through like 15 launchers and just ended up back at Nova. Nothing was able replicate my exact weird setup I've built over 12 years.
At this point I'm more tempted to use JADx to decompile Nova, import it into Android Studio, and fix decompilation errors than I'm motivated to find a different launcher.
Tried Total Launcher?
I don't remember why it didn't work but the link is purple on Google so something didn't fit.
It's like the Arch... LFS of launchers. It basically gives you a bad template, but loads of control to do whatever you please
If I was all in college I'll love total launcher. Now I just use Niagara launcher of kvaesitso launcher
Where do I sign up for your mailing list? :)
I had similar issues with the latest beta version from Github.
A few years ago, I installed Nova on my parent's phones to work around small text on the stock launcher and to make it easier to move the layout to a new phone. I wanted to replace it with Lawnchair, but the icons freaked out while I was recreating the setup, so I gave up. Octopi Launcher seems to be a good replacement, but they expect new apps to appear on the home screen(s) and unfortunately Octopi doesn't support that, so I'm currently testing Pear Launcher, which is closer to Lawnchair, fairly simple, but stable so far.
I might go with Octopi for myself, but I too like to have new apps appear on my home (so I don't have to go look for them and don't forget to remove what I'm testing), so I'm not sure yet. I like the performance of Lynx Launcher, but it also lacks this feature. By default it also uses a different "layout"... but it's smooth on my phone, there's no BS. A tempting option.
Smart Launcher seems to be very nice, but pushes the premium stuff hard. While I plan to buy/donate to support development of the launcher I will use, I'd like to test things without having a "upgrade to premium" banner in front of me.
I know it's just a launcher, but f me, it's hard to find a good replacement for Nova.
Me too but tapping the same spot to get to the same app still works so I just keep using it.
Lawnchair isn't a one-to-one replacement unfortunately. I customized my Nova Launcher pretty heavily, I guess I'll have to just not download any more updates. I hope the update this week was just bug fixes, as the patch notes implied, otherwise I'll have to find an APK of the last version.
i'm really sad...
i've had the same nova config for 10 years, almost untouched....
none of the FOSS launchers are even close in functionality and customization.... i tried them all...
Same. Only thing that I've changed in more than a decade since my Galaxy S4 is adding another row of apps when the aspect ratio got taller.
I love the gestures, but they don't seem to be available on most launchers
https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/teslacoil-software/nova-launcher/nova-launcher-8104-8-2-4-release/
Also check out ApkPure.com
Thank you
I had a pretty basic Nova setup. I used Lawnchair (or its' predecessor under LineageOS) and configured it to mostly look like my Nova setup in 15 minutes or so while sitting in a waiting room.
While he says that Instabridge is in a “difficult position,” he thinks that open sourcing Nova “has to be a component” of helping rebuild trust with the community:
Yea, I bet it is a difficult situation, wanting to add advertisements and trackers to an app you didn't develop while trying to skirt out of a public commitment for going open source, an act that would allow people to completely undo your efforts for ads and trackers. I can see why they don't want to open source it.
For context that is paraquoting Barry(the ex-dev that left) talking about instabridge and open sourcing it. the full quote is in the post.
I am using Kvaesitso which is great, but not Nova.
+1 for Kvaesitso. It requires a different way of thinking but in the end it needs much less tinkering. I wouldn't return to Nova now even if it were open sourced.
The one feature of Nova I wish Kvaesitso had is swiping on icons can do other things than tapping on them. For example swiping on the wallet icon opens a specific card. Swiping on podcast apps opened audiobook app instead.
Been using Olauncher from fdroid since I switched to grapheneOS a few years ago:
https://f-droid.org/packages/app.olauncher
Zero complaints so far, pretty minimalist launcher.
Moved to Octopi launcher. It's nice.
Looking at Dragon Launcher too which is really cool. However, I need more time to set it all up.
Just nailed down my Octopi setup today after abandoning Nova and so far enjoying it. A handful of things feel unintuitive, but some of it may be habits from a decade plus using Nova. The reachable drawer, where you can have it at first only open about halfway, is awesome. The worst part has been the lack of comprehensive search (apps, files, web, all in one). Installed Sesame to cover that and it's been fine.
I moved to Niagara launcher about a year ago when the Nova purchase was about to go through. Have been really enjoying it.
Once I got used to it i realized I'll never use anything else (hopefully).
Can't believe Smart Launcher hasn't been mentioned yet! It's as close to one to one as it gets for a launcher to Nova!
Been using it since like 2013 and I don't think I could ever go back to stock.
This is my new favorite launcher.
indistract minimalist launcher
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.indistractablelauncher.android
Looks a lot like M-Launcher on F-Droid.
Thanks for sharing that. I'm going to use it now, because it's FOSS.
I think I tried that one and I didn't like that you could only have 4 apps on the main page.
You can adjust it in settings up to as many that will fit
Are there any other benefits over the one I posted that you know of?
Not off the top of my head, but I haven't used it in a year or two so it's probably changed a bit since then.
Wait, I can't get more than 4. How do you get more than 4?
Paid users?
Why pay once when you can pay monthly?
Think of the shareholders!
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
130 points (97.1% liked)
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