Man I hope linux phone somehow rises through the ashes…not many places to find hope anymore
Wait ppl still use nova launcher?
I was until the announcement. It worked for me. I liked the tag based app drawer and nova search.
I’m now oscillating between smart launcher and octopi launcher. Changing your habits is difficult.
Tried it once back in the 2010s, didn’t like that I had to pay for features that my phone’s built-in launcher offers for free, uninstalled and never used it again. I especially didn’t like that there was no burn-in protection feature (cause this was back when OLED burn-in was still an issue).
With Nova, I set the grid to 13 rows and left off the labels.
Based on recommendations for a Nova replacement, I tried Lawnchair. But it only goes up to 10 rows, leaving space for labels even when labels are off.
Can anyone point me to a launcher that allows 13 rows?
I’ve been using Smart Launcher for however long since Nova sold out, 3 years?
I just checked and mine is set to 7 columns, 17 rows. Might be worth a look?
https://www.smartlauncher.net/Currently on Lawnchair 15 beta and you can do up to 20 columns and rows. But it needs to be enabled under experimental features.
I discovered I don’t need the beta for that, just the experimental features I didn’t know were there.
Thanks. I’ll try.
Have you tried Hyperion launcher? It’s what I gravitated to after Nova.
Just tried now, thanks.
It only goes up to 12 rows, but rechecking Nova I see that it also only goes up to 12 rows. I miscounted my home screen.
The other feature I used to smash a lot into a single home screen is the swipe up and swipe down gesture on each icon to get two other closely related apps. I haven’t verified if Hyperion has this yet.
It does! It’s my favorite feature. I put all my games under one app and swiping up or down on the main icon and it brings up a folder.
This might be better for me in some ways. But what I have now is different. Tapping gets me one app, swiping up gets me a second, and swiping down gets me a third.
Just downloaded Hyperion and trying to add gestures to apps but cannot see where.
Am I missing something obvious?
You have to create the folder first then bottom right is settings for that folder when open.
Ah ok. It can’t do what I’m after then. I use Nova do that tap signal opens a specific contact chat and swiping opens it normally.
Can’t find another laincher that can do that
Oh gotcha. Yeah I’m not sure then. Good luck!
Yes, thanks. I’ve been experimenting with Hyperion.
I feel obliged to report on which one I settle on, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet.
Sorry, if you sell your project to a data collection firm you have already lost the plot anyways. These companies care only about one thing, and it’s not “making a quality app”.
I’ve been using Hex launcher since the whole selling data nova launcher thing. Essentially you get your widgets as a home screen, and thats it. You press on the screen and get 6 app choices, the search at the the top, and notifications at the bottom. To get all the apps you put three periods “…”
Its almost too simple.
Another reason to stop being bound to Android.
and be bound to apple instead or?
I mean Graphene os and Linux phones.
graphene is just hardened android, linux phones aren’t so usable or customizable yet
It’s not a real replacement but if you want to support open source stuff, fossify apps including the launcher. Users and support will get it improving faster. On F-Droid and google Play store
I like lawnchair.
I am using Lawnchair from IzzyOnDroid, and very happy with it. Strong recommend.
I moved over to octopi launcher. It’s really good, and single dev like how nova started.
The developer also posted here IIRC, so that’s a W.
So here’s the problem I’m having with Octopi, and I’m not even sure of the right vocabulary to describe it.
I’m using the Outline icon pack, not that I think that matters here. But I’m trying to make an icon for the calendar that updates the date each day. I can see the icons 1 through 31 in several different icon styles, but if I choose today’s date, Octopi doesn’t update tomorrow.
Another way of stating this is that in the icon drawer itself, several other launchers show my Google calendar with today’s date but Octopi shows the standard 31st.
What is this feature even called?
And am I right to assume that it’s a feature that depends partly on the launcher?
I do believe that is a launcher functionality. octopi launcher has a subreddit and you can suggest features and stuff there.
Thanks. I’ve been trying to stay off Reddit, but it’s still so much more active than Lemmy.
Yeah, I only landed there because there was a Google result for this same post there, don’t know if the dev has a sub in lemmy
Octopi is my current leader.
I’m not sure whether I will actually use this feature, but it’s fascinating the way each icon can be resized to a different size.
Also I note that it lets you set the number of columns, but not the number of rows. By setting the number of columns you set the grid size and then the number of rows is forced. But not entirely forced because if you show icon labels you’re arranging rectangles and if you don’t show icon labels you’re arranging squares. And also not entirely forced because just because you said that there were seven full size icons across the screen doesn’t mean you can’t fit in 14 half-sized icons or one double wide double tall icon and five regulars.
Yeah, it’s a feature request I’m sure he’ll get to eventually. You can also control the number of rows by changing the icon size, it leaves a bit of whitespace, but it’s manageable.
Nova was not the end-all-be-all of Android development. It had a lot of features and was highly customizable, sure, but there are many other launchers to pick from.
Nova launcher has been dead since it was sold to an ad company three years ago.
It’s been dead since they didn’t release it under a FOSS license.
That’s really the only way a piece of software is guaranteed to survive.
It’s still not a guarantee. I quite liked neo/omega launcher but there are breaking bugs introduced in the last update over two years ago. Nobody seems interested in fixing them so I moved on.
(Of course anyone has the option of fixing them, and I understand that that’s your point!)
Yes, I get your point and I paused for a second if I should really use the word guarantee, because sometimes development just stops on software, regardless of license.
The thing is, if development stops on proprietary software, the project is truly dead. With FOSS it can always be revived by someone with enough interest in the software because the codebase is freely available. So instead of being dead, it’s merely “in hibernation”.
A good example is the Amarok mp3 player that I used in KDE 15 years ago. It stopped being maintained around 2011 and fell in disuse until last year some people picked up the code, cleaned it up and ported it to Qt5, and now it’s being actively maintained again.
I imagine it doesn’t happen that often, but that’s a really nice success story
Meh. It’s been dead to me since it was sold off to an ad company years ago. It was novel and cool 10 years ago but today there are plenty of better alternatives and even default launchers have come a long way. OneUI + Good Lock has been more than enough for me on my phone and tab.
Does any other launcher allow setting of custom swipe actions on home screen icons?
Lawnchair 15.Beta 1 has swipe left and swipe right.
only works on the home screen though not the dock maybe that’ll be fixed though
It works on the dock.
I literally tried it and it doesn’t work it just tries to change the homepage
Sucks for you then.
For anyone else, it works for me so it could probably work for you. YMMV. It is in beta.
Just to show it is in the dock, I turned background on.
yes it lets you do it but it doesn’t work if you actually try to do it did you try or did you just set some options and then say it works
Yes. This is not an exclusive feature.
It’s either gotten more common since I last explored or I was looking in the wrong places.
I’ve settled on Total Launcher. It has custom swipe on all 4 directions.
Also background double & triple tap. And double finger swipe up & down.
Thought all of them did
Niagara launcher has “pop-ups” on swipe which can act as an app folder, or display app shortcuts or widgets. Not exactly the same behaviour but imo tidier & more elegant approach to basically the same use case.
Lawnchair launcher
Are you in a cave? I heard an echo.
