Nova Launcher could soon introduce Nova AI, a built-in AI assistant complete with a chatbot, and a new Nova Plus subscription tier
Thanks for the reminder! I had switched to Lawnchair, but I just realized I had forgotten to uninstall Nova. Fixed!
Same. Just uninstalled that spyware
Anyone that gives a single shit about their data being sold to third parties should have dumped Nova a long time ago.
This is the first I’ve heard about any privacy issues. I dumped Nova recently because I found a good FOSS launcher.
Mind sharing which launcher you switched to?
Dragon Launcher. Apparently it isn’t on Play; you have to use F-Droid.
Lawnchair is a pretty good FOSS launcher.
Can confirm. I switched from Nova Launcher a year+ ago. I haven’t noticed any downgrade. Lawnchair feels cleaner, better.
I guess proprietary software has no option but enshittification once an open source alternative exists. The proprietary product becomes strictly for chumps, so they make it a full on scam.
Do you know if Lawnchair can do a splitscreen with two apps? I got a new phone with lawnchair and I couldn’t figure out how to do it the other day. I know it used to be a part of Android. I don’t know if it’s part of the OS, the launcher, or Google just decided to remove the feature.
I’m not sure if this is even launcher dependant thing? I’m on pixel 9 pro, using lawnchair myself.
In your open app-selector, you should have drop-down to start split screen mode.
spoiler
God bless. I didn’t even see the drop down. My old Samsung and LG didn’t do it that way. And of course searching on the internet for the solution yielded jack because everyone has enshitittfied their search engines. Thank you kind stranger.
well if you didn’t jump ship in 2022 i guess this is your time
hasn’t update this app since 2021 lol. Good thing the pre-enshitification version worked perfectly fine without updates.
What have they done to my boy
You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.
It’s true even for apps.
Lawnchair runs fine on GrapheneOS.
And on pretty much every other android too.
Yeah it’s time. Nova was great but now it’s fully enshitified. I went with Niagara. There’s a short learning period, less than a week for me to feel comfortable, but I love it. Very simple and clean.
Same, it’s great
Total enshittification. Practically conned then kicked out the original team so that they make their own intrusive changes.
Hell, any data they harvest will and can be sold to other parties. God knows how much fucking lunatic Peter could be offering them.
If anyone is stubborn enough and until someone makes a near 1:1 version – and Lawnchair is functionally close to what Nova does – do backup the existing settings, uninstall the app, roll back to the pre-2022 7.0.57b version, sideload install, then from GPlay disable auto-updating for the app. Yeah, and put restrictions on the app from trying to do telemetry.
This is what I ended up doing. Keeps it in the older untarnished state, things still work fine. Telemetry hadn’t been added yet
I still got my Nova7 Pre-Branch .apk saved on my NAS. I really should try to find a replacement but so far it works as expected.
You just solved one of my long-standing problems! I’ve been looking for a launcher that could replace Nova for me, but I hadn’t been able to find anything that really did the job. Octopi for the win!
I am in the process of moving over my highly-customized setup now. And I made the larger of the two donations, in support of the app.
Thanks for suggesting it and thanks to the developer who built it!
Lawnchair for graphene
Kvaesitso is really nice as well
+1 for lawn chair
You know some people beat this drum that more people should pay for good software and that it guarantees it’s longevity and independence, and so I did buy the pro version of Nova years ago and now we are here, I think when it comes to software unless it’s open source and you can have full control over it then it’s not worth anything, as it’s only matter of time before it either gets deleted or enshitified, that’s why I started shifting to open source alternatives for most things
The problem with paying is that it doesn’t solve the fundamental economics. Marginal cost of copying software is near zero, fractions of a cent. So there’s just no way to justify economically charging anything more than a nominal fee for software. The entire concept of charging to allow people to download stuff is simply pure greed, and paying a little bit won’t stop the greed in the slightest. And a lot of people simply enjoy creating software, so there’s always going to be a foss alternative.
What does any of this do? What problem or need is it addressing? I’m honestly so confused by 99% of technology these days, it seems to be nothing more than an electronic pacifier for an entire generation of ADHD addicts.
By adding launchers you can customize the Android “desktop” way more in depth and it enables you to add for example custom app icons
I don’t think that’s the point. The point is the AI features being added for no reason
damn i remember the good old days with Nova where everything was so smooth. Evie launcher too. And even we have many problems with them, Microsoft launcher was good in the beginning.
There were many good options. Now it’s just Niagara Launcher that doesn’t suck.
Edit: I see Octopi getting mentioned a lot. Might have to check that one out.
lawn chair for the win
or any stock launchers will do. Nowadays the stocks are more than enough for me. On GOS, I tried Lawnchair but always go back to the default one.
Dragon Launcher is a really cool paradigm shift. Pie menus, pie menus everywhere.
So basically any advantage over the native launcher is void?
And yet another piece of software I have to abandon because of this dipshit cult behaviour.
Thanks guys. You really just went ahead and put your dick in it.
