Ugh, quite annoying. My next phone might be an Android (instead of the current iPhone), and I was looking forward to returning to Nova Launcher, after having used it many years ago as my favorite launcher. This feels like a big no-go now.

What are other good customizable launchers on Android nowadays?

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turbocon 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Much less popular but I switched to Kvaesitso from Nova about a month ago and it's been amazing and it's open source. Much more opinionated than Nova but it matched how I used Nova so I really enjoy it.

[1] https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/

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bastard_op 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been using lawnchair as a launcher that is open source (apache) since the first news broke months when the previous dev/owner warned people what was coming, and it works just fine. Not quite as versatile as Nova Launcher, but with 100% less adware now that the new adware company is running up in people with a bait and switch.

Enshittification is real!

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mbirth 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Early on, Lawnchair implemented a blacklist to hide apps they deemed “bad”. They only removed it after lots of protest from users. That has “burned” this launcher for me.

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aceki 8 hours ago | parent [-]

For those curious, see this gem of a closed PR:

https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/pull/905

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JohnFen 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I found this discussion (linked to in the PR) more illuminating: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7azc2i/comment/dpg...

I tried Lawnchair out when figuring out what I was going to replace Nova with. I didn't end up choosing it, but if I had known they tried to do this (even if it only made it to the alpha channel) I wouldn't have even bothered to try it out.

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colordrops 8 hours ago | parent [-]

9 years ago. I've been using the launcher and it works great. Does everything I needed from Nova and it's open source. Every project has hiccups.

	▲	JohnFen 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm certainly not going to say nobody should use it. But I assume the dev then is the dev now. That he was OK introducing something like that, even 9 years ago, tells me that his values and my values are very far apart. I did actually evaluate it (before I knew this history) and it didn't meet my needs, so I chose something else purely on technical grounds anyway.

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chroma_zone 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I paid for "Square Home" a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it. It's highly customizable. The Windows Phone style layout probably isn't for everyone but it works well for me.

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TheCraiggers 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Depends what you want, I guess. The nice thing about Android is we still have many options.

I recently moved to AIO Launcher and I've been really enjoying it. I'm sure it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea though.

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cfiggers 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I know this is weird, but.......

I'm really happy with Microsoft Launcher.