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
Neo needs an update. Still working but giving me more issues on Android 14.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
What is going on with Nova?
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.
Oof, purchased by an analytics company probably means they only want it for your/my information.
I never found one I liked as much tbh
It’s not popular at all, but I love LukeLauncher on fdroid.
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.
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.
At one point, I would have said Simple Launcher, but Simple Mobile Tools is now adware.
And unfortunately, the vast majority of alternative launchers are in the “minimalist” category, which means that there’s basically no way to organize your apps in a way that makes more than a handful of them convenient to access.
I’d say, if you’ve got a Samsung phone and you’re not planning on turning it into something else, stick with the Samsung launcher.
ETA: Fast Draw is very new and actually has categories, and it’s not the worst in terms of ease of use either. But if you like widgets, you get 0 or 1.
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
