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)

  • Kassan6ra@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 days ago

    I also switched to niagara launcher since I’m also on an old device and need something minimal. Big question though: which launcher other than nova has the most shortcut options? Not just swiping on folders, but double tapping, double tap +up etc. That’s the basic thing I miss from nova.

  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    2 days ago

    I find the stock Samsung launcher for one ui 3 pretty comfortable, but if I were to pick a different launcher, I’d probably just grab fossify launcher, since it’s pretty dang lightweight, especially on my old hardware.

    • hikaru755@lemmy.world
      5·
      3 days ago

      Heard a lot of praise for it and tried to test it the other day, but noped right back out when just trying to create a folder in the dock was horribly buggy and repeatedly resulted in having a duplicate of one of the app icons in it showing on the home screen, weirdly overlapping the “at a glance” widget, and when I tried to fix it the folder just disappeared. Not sure if I was doing something wrong, but that wasn’t very confidence inspiring. Stock Pixel 7, so it’s not like I’m using a particularly unusual setup either

      • 27Purple@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        Sounds like my experience so you’re not alone. Tried it on both a Pixel 8 Pro and P10 Pro XL. Its foundation is good, but it needs a lot of polishing.

  • Dave@lemmy.nz
    30·
    4 days ago

    I love KISS.

    I change the settings to set swipes for common apps like browser and camera, set others as favorites like email and messaging apps, and then set it to show nothing else except the search bar. Tapping the search bar shows commonly used apps, or you can a search.

    Works great for my “workflow”, and leaves the “desktop” almost completely clear. Then I have the wallpaper set to the NASA astronomy picture of the day. Works great!

    • Noctambulist@lemmy.world
      5·
      4 days ago

      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.

  • finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    181·
    4 days ago

    Niagara. It’s simple and clean. All I need is an app drawer and a few favorites, and that’s basically what it provides.

    • fuzzzerd@programming.devEnglish
      6·
      4 days ago

      Same here. It’s very smooth. I wish there were a few other customization points, I’d rather use my own weather app than the built in one, and I do, but then end up with different forecasts as they use different sources.

      Minor complaints, but still a little friction that could be solved.

      • TotalCourage007@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        They actually fixed my minor complaint which was allowing folders on the home screen so big props to Niagara for that one.

        • fuzzzerd@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Agreed. They have steadily added new features that don’t bloat the experience. It’s just a little too constrained for my tastes, but the rest of the Polish makes up for it.

  • a_person@piefed.socialEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    I use μLauncher, its a quite different foss launcher based on swipe actions. It works well for me. Check it out, its intresting.

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
      6·
      4 days ago

      +1 for smart launcher. I got it back when the paid version was like 5 bucks. It’s more now, but I’ve been very happy with it overall.

      Lawnchair also looks great. I’d consider switching if Smart Launcher becomes enshittified or if Lawnchair has better features.

      • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol
        3·
        4 days ago

        I like the categorization, so if I do end up switching it would probably be to QuickDraw. It was… Fine when I used it, just having to manually sort apps got tedious. SL has decent autosorting, so I switched back

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 days ago

      I switched to Smart Launcher because it was the only one I found that mentioned being able to import my Nova backup. The transfer wasn’t perfect, but extremely good.

      • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol
        2·
        4 days ago

        Yeah, it was my second smart phone ever, and my first android (first was an iPhone 4s that my grandmother got me. I very much did not want it, and told her as much before she got it), so I didn’t have a previous launcher. Just tried like 10 of them, and liked SL more than any of the others I’d tried. I think Nova was in that lot xD

  • Kiernian@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 days ago

    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”?

    • JayGray91🐉🍕@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      This is my choice as well. I like Niagara but the different way they do widgets I just can never get. KISS launcher is being true to its namesake, and I like most of it.

      Kvaesitso is like a mixture of both to me. It doesn’t have the notification style of Niagara, but it’s simple in a different flavor to both Niagara and KISS.

      I can get a clean home page like KISS with just a clock widget.

      Swipe left and I get the app drawer with search bar focused (you can turn it off). On top of the drawer you can pin favorite apps and even shortcuts, as well as let it populate with your most used apps automatically.

      Swipe up from home you get a dedicated vertically scrolling widget page. The built in default widgets are useful but it’s easy to add more. Downside is the widgets only stack vertically.

      I’m just a bit irritated with the gestures to open the notification panel and quick access tiles because it uses accessibility system, and that freaks my bank apps to no end.

  • AstroLightz@lemmy.world
    121·
    3 days ago

    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).