I bought and paid for Nova Launcher like 15 years ago and it’s been my go-to for that time; however, over the last year or so it’s been abandoned and is a buggy mess.
What ship should I jump onto? (stock google launcher is giving me the ick)
Stock GrapheneOS
I used to spend a lot of time configuring different launchers (including Nova Launcher) but since I’ve switched to GrapheneOS, I’m actually quite happy with the stock launcher. It has everything I need — multiple home screens, widgets, folders. And I use App Search as dedicated search and secondary launch app that I’ve set up as digital assistant for gesture invocation.
Niagara. It’s simple and clean. All I need is an app drawer and a few favorites, and that’s basically what it provides.
I’ve been trying different text launchers for a while, Olauncher has been pretty stable.
Lawnchair. An improved Launcher3 that I use in place of Lineage’s built-in launcher.
I don’t really like text-only “simple” launchers as the icons help with quickly figuring out what app does what. Some of the features the AOSP Launcher3 lacks are present in Lawnchair/(mainly more customization over existing features).
I tried Lawnchair the other day and found it severely lacking.
Bought nova, too. And regret. Now it is lawnchair, with a finally good update solution through obtainium, because of their confusing alpha, beta releases.
Two votes for lawnchair, thank you.
You folks are not concerned that it requires a bible of permission s and has a google search bar (aka tracker bar).
I’m actually a single person… a solitary ‘folk’ if you will.
I switched to Olauncher a few years ago, and I cannot use anything else now. Works well for me.
+1. Olauncher is fantastic
Niagara, nice simple clean
Surprised I had to scroll this far for a Niagara recommendation. Been on it since Nova sale and it’s fantastic
Niagra is the bees knees
Niagara at the moment. There’s a lot I’d change about it but it’s the best I’ve spent the time to learn the ins and outs of so far.
I also recommend Niagara, it’s an excellent launcher
Lawnchair. Can’t donate to the dev hard enough.
A search-focused, free and open source launcher for Android
What does a launcher do, what can a non-default one do (or not do) that warrents the effort to not just use whatever the default is?
Using a non-default launcher gives you more options to customise your home screen and any other screens off to the side.
For example, Pixels always have the Google search bar right there on the home screen, and it’s not removable (or not last I checked). But what if I don’t want it there? A 3rd party launcher will usually give me that option.
Or another example - some launchers allow the use of gestures to activate certain things, eg open app A, start an email in app B, call a specific contact, etc. This can be gestures on empty parts of the screen or swipes on icons.
On my phone, on which I use Total Launcher, it looks like this:
Tapping each of those 12 icons opens a folder. But I can also swipe each folder icon up, down, left or right and have certain apps or activities open without ever needing to go into the app drawer.
So, if I want to make a call, I swipe left on the communications folder (top right). If I want to open Lemmy, I swipe right on the Internet folder (blue, bottom row). If I want to open my phone settings, I swipe up on the Tools folder. And so on.
That way, I can activate 48 different things while only having 12 icons on screen, keeping it quite neat and tidy, and leaving space for my little collection of widgets at the top.
Gotcha, thanks!
No problem 👍
I used to use KISS but now I love Pie Launcher, I just wish it bugged less often (sometimes I have to kill it and restart it) and I wish we could have folders to open too.
Smart Launcher gang checking in. I am also a Nova Launcher refugee, and I found that Smart Launcher had similar features and ease of use.
Personally I’ve not experienced any problems but that’s likely because I’ve got an old phone with a old version of Android.
One of the tech YouTubers I like a lot did an in depth look at alternative launchers to Nova in this video.
I keep phones forever as well but like to keep them updated as long as possible (Pixel 6 is my daily driver)
The reason I bring up my phone’s age is to try to explain a likely reason why I haven’t experienced any bugs, at least none to my knowledge. Running the Samsung S20. Love my expandable storage and the battery still lasts decently long
TREK: Total Interface
It’s Total Launcher with an LCARS theme.
I’ve been using it for 4 or 5 years now across two different phones.
I absolutely despise the entire smartphone menu paradigm so this is as close as I can get to departing from it and sticking with something static that doesn’t move about or spontaneously change behaviors every third update.
That’s a static menu system sorted, now if I could just get my pixel 8 pro to stick to 30 minutes screen timeout after I set it once, that’d be great. It flips back to 30 seconds nearly every time I put it down and sometimes while I’m holding it.
Why isn’t there a developer option for “never let the phone change settings on its own”?
