They got a new owner years ago. No one should still be using it. Lawnchair has been great for me.
Holy shit the screenshots on Play store are depressing

You want to use one of the much more recent nightly or beta builds.
Can you remove the search bar at the bottom of the home screen?
Yeah, that’s what I do. It’s fully customizable.
Hm maybe I’ll try it out.
I used to use lawnchair. Good reason to switch back.
I ducked off the Nova train with their fishy new owners a few months ago. My one complaint about Lawnchair is that the search function is slower and less effective, otherwise it’s great!
If anyone is looking to try something new - I really enjoyed
WaterfallNiagra after dropping Nova.+1 for Niagra. It takes a few days to get used to but it’s the launcher every power user didn’t know they wanted. Lifetime purchase options and a very responsive/passionate dev
Seconded. Looks good and I’ve found browsing by letter is way faster than the traditional folders (although you can still use folders with premium). I bought the upgrade after a few months.
I picked up Lawnchair when I de-googled my phone a bit more than a year ago. There were a couple launchers I considered, but honestly the name is what sold me. And I haven’t missed Nova since.
Made the switch last year. Have had no issues,especially now that you can do folders.
Once again the “Everything that’s not FOSS will turn to shit at one point or another” theorem proves true.
And if a FOSS project turns into shit a fork will come up.
One perfect example was simple apps acquisition. New owners turned it a ad ridden mess, fossify apps fork came to the rescue.
nextcloud! mariadb! libreoffice!
Fuck MariaDB, all my homies use Postgres.
Mariadb got bought by a private equity strip miner company late 2024, so it will probably be mined for every enshittification possible before thrown on the garbage heap like every company private equity has acquired before it.
(It always takes a few years of inefficient planning before private equity starts rolling out enshittification)
I’m getting really tired of companies pissing all over my name!
time to go super…
Shouldn’t have tried to disassemble Johnny 5.
No disassemble!
No disassemble!
Newton Crosby. Jackass.
It already had a new owner which is why I stopped using it years ago.
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Ahh sonofabitch! It’s already updated for me and there is no changelog. Turned off auto update.
Edit: and uninstalled. Lawnchair FTW.
You should really not have automatic updates on. Aside from the fact that you also should have moved away from Nova years ago when Branch first acquired them.
Yeah. Totally correct. That one slipped by.
Annnnd TIME! About 1 hour.
95% interface and widgets swapped over to lawnchair!
Boom!
Just get the older APK form one of the mirror sites.
This used to be my favorite piece of software I paid for. Then… 💩
I JUST STARTED USING IT TWO WEEKS AGO CMON

They were already acquired by a shit head like 3 years ago. This is just a new shit head.
Bit late to the party…
I love that picture. XD
Nova launcher works great for me, I haven’t let it update in years. Looks like that isn’t going to change.
I’ve been burned so many times that I’ve finally learned my lesson. When I find that I like an app, that it does everything I want, the first thing I do is turn auto updates off. It can stay frozen in time forever, just working normally.
Understand where the thought comes from, but do you know what zero days are
No one is going to waste a zero day on a random guy using Nova launcher. Zero days are used against governments & other militaries.
But if you’re not installing updates to patch out a zero day, the vulnerability is still there.
when are you nerds going to learn that software is religion , developers are prophets, and users are following the words of God?
Yeah sure, the os gets regular updates, banking apps get updates.
But when it comes to digital devices, convenience and security are in a constant tug of war, ultimately we have to make a choice. And when I make that choice I remember that this isn’t a company phone, there’s no customer data at risk, no important info to be breached. And still the number of times I’ve been hacked: 0
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I just switched to Octopi. For me, it’s an almost perfect replacement. Plus it’s a local developer.
Can confirm, only one that had feature parity for most of my nova setup
I showed my wife the before and after of my home pages. She said, “They’re the same.”
Happy.
Is this open source?
(I couldn’t find it)
If you want FOSS, check KISS launcher. Its feature rich, light on resources, and available through F-droid.
Awesome app, replaced Lawnchair. Development simply moved too slowly on LC
is it new? cant find it on the launcher comparison table https://grabster.notion.site/6671f3b62d8043c4aaaae22a241e3f05?v=91d9b664887643298f85fe18044d3560
thanks for this table!
Nova is rated as advanced customisability, and in this table Bridge Launcher is the only FLOSS launcher that has advanced customisability and is not discontinued, but based on the app page it’s basically a programming platform, not an actual launcher :c
Wow, I got scared, I thought that was the one I’m using but I switched to Niagara Launcher long ago
I first found out about Niagara on a thread like this a couple of years ago. It’s great!!!
I switched to Niagara a few months ago and bought it. It’s been working great for me. No regrats.
Niagara with minimalist black and white icons is just awesome
Yup, Niagara is a dream. I hope it stays this way forever, but even if it doesn’t I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Yeah same here. Text based launcher really has helped me put phone down more which is great.
Niagara Launcher is great. I have been using it for a few years now
Lawnchair is pretty good.
Yup. I’ve carried it over several phones, have the paid version.
Lawnchair doesn’t have a paid version, it’s open source
Might be a different launcher I had before then.
On 3, 2, 1,… Everybody Juuuuuuump to any other good launchers
I like this one https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/
This is what I’m using too. Was a little different, but simple enough, out of the way enough and easy too. Goldilocks zone launcher
Yep. Kvaesitso is the goat!
This one is the best!
Hyperion seems like a good drop-in replacement.
Can’t recommend KISS Launcher enough.
I recommend Kvaesitso, very snappy with lots of functionality.
Am I just not seeing it or do they not seem to allow icons on the desktop?
they do? you go to the settings, home screens, and increase the dock rows.
It just looks like none of the screen shots are showing desktop icons which is weird
if you think its a bug, i think you can create an issue here https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso/issues
That’s my second favorite after Smart Launcher
I did try that when switching from Nova but it ran quite horribly on my phone. I’ve since switched to Olauncher and while the absolutely minimalistic style took some time getting used to, I don’t want to go back anymore.
I’ve been using lawnchair (which is a great substitute) ever since the news of the buyout from an ad company was announced, but that was a long time ago… Not sure why this is coming up now.
Anyway, a few days back I found out a new launcher and I want to spread the love for it. It requires more effort to configure it at first but I’m really liking its UX and the simplicity of the screen. It is called dragon launcher and I am having a nice time making small incremental changes to personalize it more and more and has been working great for me: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.elnix.dragonlauncher
I just switched to Lawnchair recently, and I really like it. I’ll definitely give Dragon a look.
I also went from Nova Launcher to Lawnchair and it’s been great. I’ll check out Dragon some time but I’m glad I found a suitable replacement for Nova.




























