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)
I use μLauncher, its a quite different foss launcher based on swipe actions. It works well for me. Check it out, its intresting.
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.
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.
I want to try Mako and Olauncher, but I’m afraid of malware and data collection. Any advice?
OLauncher is great. I used Nova for a long time but I’m happy with OLauncher. It’s also available on F-Droid which is pretty neat.
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.
It’s so good. Cuts out so much crap.
I also recommend Niagara, it’s an excellent launcher
Been using Fast Draw for a minute now. I like the simplicity and the lack of even the desire for a search bar. The only problem I have is that it can’t handle a widget well, and can’t handle more than one widget at all.
Square home 2.
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”?
I use Niagara. I needed something that was linear to help stave off the urge to browse.
Lawnchair
…Microsoft Launcher.
It does what I want, has no ads and basically is so smooth I forget I even have a custom launcher installed.
Microsoft was the only launcher I found that has the feature to swipe up on an app icon to launch a shortcut. Nova had swipe up or down that I used to launch different apps.
Smart Launcher will allow you to swipe up, down, left, and right to launch shortcuts.
The paid version will also allow you to use icons to open widgets in a pop-up.
Not sure about the latter part, but Total is another launcher allowing 4-way swiping for shortcuts. Absolute godsend.
I also used Nova until recently. In a similar post I saw that someone mentioned Octopi Launcher, and I liked it so far. Some features that I liked in Nova are missing, but apart from that, I find it to be a good replacement for now.
TLDR: Octopi Launcher
Lawnchair
Though it is a bit buggy for me.
Been using the Fossify suite for a while. The Fossify Launcher works well enough.
