I’ve been just not updating Nova as I haven’t had a ton of time to research this, I really like the GUI, what are my privacy friendly/FOSS options for an android s21 5G?
Update: Went with Neo launcher. It’s got enough of the features that I’m willing to use it.
There are a few spots where padding can’t be removed that is obnoxious, FF search bar and dock are what I have noticed so far.
I also don’t like that I can’t continuosly scroll through my home screens.
Neo launcher is close
Kvaesitso is a great launcher
Seconding Kvaesito. Like many launchers, there’s some getting used to but I’m loving it.
I’m not a fan of all the permissions it needs, I know they’re reasonably used for features but it basically requests all the permissions.
I’d love to see it being based on modules, install more functions as apps. Much easier to tweak permissions.
Kvaesitso is fantastic. Can get it on fdroid.
It doesn’t use reproducible builds. using the github release directly is more secure. Just add https://github.com/mm2-0/kvaesitso to obtainium
Why is using the GitHub release more secure than using the F-Droid build?
Thanks, I know about reproducible builds, but I still don’t see how the GitHub release is more secure than the F-Droid build. In both cases you need to trust whoever built the apk.
It is known that F-Droid uses the published source code, reviews it for anti-features, and they build hundreds of apps used by thousands of people. If they did any tampering or had a security hole we would learn about it pretty fast (we just need one user of one of their built apps to report).
On the other hand using a GitHub release we need to trust the developer of the app: trust that the source code has no malicious code in it (or review the code ourselves, does anybody do that?), there’s no third party reviewing it, and trust that the apk they release uses exactly the published code. The user base of an individual app’s GitHub release is way smaller than that of all apps built by F-Droid, so by chance it would take way longer for users to detect any security problem.
So, as I see it, it boils down to either trusting a big community with a long story of building and providing FOSS apps, a good reputation, and offering reproducible builds on all apps that managed to achieve them; or trusting dozens of different developers, most of whom we know nothing of.
I appreciate this comment. I agree with both sides of the argument to an extent, but feel that there is some unbalanced thinking with this rejection of Fdroid that’s been happening. Its a hugely important service.
Yes, I feel like F-Droid has been getting some shit lately for no reason. I think it’s good that Obtainium exists and that we have more options of easily getting apps outside the Play Store, and even better: FOSS apps.
However, I see a trend towards “F-Droid is bad and Obtainium has arrived to save us from it” and get the feeling that many times people don’t even understand how both things work. Obtainium is basically doing what some people were doing for long time using RSS, it’s not a revolution. When I tried it, it failed to properly detect the latest versions and updates of several apps, so I was personally not impressed.
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To add to this, “Kvaesitso is available in the official F-Droid repository, but all features depending on non-foss external APIs were removed.” This is preferable to a lot of people.
Fdroid is not a virus scanner you can trust blindly. You have to trust both, app devs and fdroid. I fully agree with what you write. Most devs do not yet publish reproducible builds. Maybe Fdroid should’ve created a separate repo just for them and depreciating the old repo over time. There’s no way for the user to know if it is a reproducible build or not right now. I prefer fdroid with reproducible builds over obtainium but in it’s current state it’s ambiguous which method you should use. I lean towards obtainium. In hindsight I should’nt have stated it that confident
Neo needs an update. Still working but giving me more issues on Android 14.
No major bugs on my pixel 6
What kind of issues, and what ROM?
Been using it on stock pixel7a for a while and it keeps getting slower when I swipe to go home and the app drawer will a lot of times open but then not allow me to press any apps until I close the drawer and open it again.
*OS
Its completely different. Cool for sure but completely uncomparable. Nova is a default launcher experience but customizable. Kvaesito has no app widgets and webapp support afaik, which was a nogo for me.
I keep using Nova as my nasty app, even on GrapheneOS. Would never use it with network permissions, and I also dont have other nasty apps installed
(apps can communicate how much they want, if both are coded to do it. If one has network permission, it can be used as a channel)
- It is a foss launcher
- You can create webapps with firefox
- it also has widgets
Launcher is very important, I’d use nova as well if I wouldn’t likr kvaesitso that much
I will look into Kvaesito then!
Edit: no it doesnt do it. The search is cool. But opening the app drawer for some reason is unintuitive.
Also everything is full of “edit” buttons, I mean I already edited that?
Resizable widgets and the very extensive search for anything is awesome. But
- you cannot create webapps (links or pwas)
- the work profile is not greyed out when locked, and there is no unlock/lock button
How do you want to open the drawer? Upwards? You can chabge it to right/left swipe
If you mean the widget edit button, there’s plans to change it, and to add it to the three dots menu, afaik. In the meantime you can hide it in the settings.
How do you create webapps?
I click on install in fennec and it appears on my favorites list and I can search it, and tag it. It does not appear on the homescreen like on other launchers.
I don’t use work profiles anymore, I didn’t know that. Hopefully there’s already an issue for it on their github page
What is going on with Nova?
Oof, purchased by an analytics company probably means they only want it for your/my information.
it now it’s under new management. Branch, a company that provides analytical data and metrics among other things, has acquired Nova Launcher.
Haha they don’t even have to try because normies doesn’t even care.
I have been liking Niagara!
I swapped from Nova Launcher to KISS. It is a different idea for a launcher but I have started to like it a lot.
Same. I felt I couldn’t live without Nova, now I feel like I can’t live without KISS. I really like the “swipe and type” flow to open an app and touching an empty area to open the recent entries. All that depends on your settings ofc. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s by far the fastest launcher I’ve had.
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Fossify forked all the Simple Mobile Tools apps and are working on open source, free and ad-free apps with that as the foundation. They have published a few already, Launcher is in the pipeline: https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Launcher
There is lawnchair launcher
But it’s been abandoned for a long time now
It was a damn fine launcher
It’s still usable, might be worth giving a try
Lawnchair, according to the devs, is not abandoned. In late November (of 2023), they said:
Sorry for the long break in Lawnchair announcements.
We have made significant progress in regards to Lawnchair development, and we are now actually developing Lawnchair 13 (with A13 QuickSwitch support) and custom-made no-root global search. Stay tuned for more updates and sneak peeks.
Coming soon to a lawnmower near you™
(And no, we are not dead. Also No ETAs.)
Then in December:
Hello again!
This time around, we are now developing Lawnchair 14 (with A14 QuickSwitch support). Alongside that, we are also re-adding an option to Hide Dock and options for custom Feed Providers, alongside other new features (we wont give too many spoilers 👀)
We also plan to support QuickSwitch for Android 11 to Android 14, so you can use Lawnchair with QuickSwitch on all your recent devices. (We will prioritize A12.1 to A14 first though).
(As always, No ETAs)
lawnchair is still being developed but no builds are being pushed. I’m using someone’s fork they made specifically to build their own releases: (use at your own discretion) https://github.com/Goooler/LawnchairRelease/
I’m still using lawnchair but internet cut off as it’s just a launcher so why would it even need internet?
I have used Lawnchair for years and I’ll never switch as long as it’s usable. It’s the best one around IMO, very functional and pretty.
the neo guys have a (afaik) maintained fork called neo launcher !! im using it and its working well, and not too much different from lawnchair :3
neo launcher is cool but it’s missing a couple home settings I liked with lawnchair Dx
GrapheneOS uses an updated version of AOSP Launcher. I suppose that is usable by everyone?
Lawnchair hasn’t had a release since 2018. I find it to be a bit buggy and sometimes won’t redraw the home screens. This makes me need to force close the launcher from the settings. I usually clear the cache too, just to be safe.
Just tempering expectations for anyone else looking at it. If anyone knows of a fork that is more recent let me know. Maybe someone else is maintaining somewhere.
They actually kept developing it, with the last release in August 2022, and, even though those releases were tagged as Alpha, I’ve only had some (not more than a couple times a year) freezes with crash of the launcher since. Tested on two different phones with two different ROMs
I don’t know if there’s still someone developing it, but until something else just as good (for me) pops up, I’m sticking to Lawnchair
They are develeoping it, but it’s slow because there are not as many people contributing as they would need to i think.
Anyways, if you want a more recent version, they are preparing an App store launch. One of the developers publishes more recent builds on his fork, see this comment.
Oh sweet! Thanks for the heads up! I was hoping to find a version 14 without having to figure out how to build it myself.
I took a peek into their telegram feed and it seems they’re working on version 14.
Very nice, thanks for the good news! I’ll wait patiently for it to release
I’m trying one of the Dev releases that was linked below. So far it’s pretty stable. Not sure your tolerance for any issues that may arise.
That’s reassuring, for the stable release I mean!
At the moment I don’t really feel the need to update it, I’ll just wait for a bit longer. Thanks though!
I never found one I liked as much tbh
I used trebuchet for my launcher, it’s a lineageos app but iirc there’s a downloader for it. It’s not super customizable but I like it
Ruthless Launcher is pretty nice. Unfortunately it’s not open source, but Exodus doesn’t show any trackers and if you use GrapheneOS you can simply revoke Network permissions
Once Nova got bought i tried Neo Launcher and it has been more than close enough for me, a year and a half later and i’m still using it
I haven’t found one that I like as much. My biggest hangup, and this is probably dumb, is the ability to edit the icons for PWAs so they don’t show the stupid browser icon that screams “I’m a web shortcut!!!”. I tried Hermit as a PWA/lite app replacement and Android just slaps the hermit badge on it instead. For whatever reason that annoys me enough to stick with Nova.
Could shove it in a folder and then make the tap action open the first item in the folder, then set the folder icon to whatever your want. Disadvantage is that if it’s already in a folder you can’t do that because it would require nested folders
Not a bad idea. I get picky about aesthetics though. Dumb, I know. But I’ll give it a try. Just seems silly to me that default launchers can’t manage editing the dang app shortcuts
edit: Samsungs OneUI launcher does not put the badge on a PWA. But I’m not sure I trust them any more than Nova at this point…
I spent a few hours trying any alternatives I could find on FDroid, even Aurora and just blocking network access.
Lawnchair has a giant empty space on the dock when you hide the search bar, wasting screen space.
Ended up back on Nova.
We need more options. We don’t need any more “minimalist” text launchers though.
It’s not popular at all, but I love LukeLauncher on fdroid.
I really enjoy one called Discrete Launcher from fdroid. It’s meant to be pretty minimalistic and does not support widgets from what I can tell, but you swipe up from the bottom with one finger for AppDrower and swipe down with one finger for a favorite spar at the top. But neither are shown normally, just your wallpaper. You can also program swipe left to open an app swipe right to open an app and several other gesture actions to open things or do things
