Branch Metrics sucks. They fired almost of all people working for Nova.
Bad news.
Still waiting for https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/releases to get out of beta
It’s pretty much already very usable. I have been on version 12 alpha for a long time and now on 14 beta 2, all in all since nearly a year.
Seems like it is missing a lot of the conveniences that I was once used to with Nova, though. No ability to reposition the search bar or keep it in place on other pages, no docked apps, no button to open the app drawer, the home screen grid has fixed padding and so on.
I’ve since switched to Niagara which has been okay, but I’ve never found anything else like Nova since.
Fun fact: the original Lawnchair’s founding developer is the TSA nofly list hacker
I mean it is a fine launcher. Personally I use Pie Launcher cause I’m a bit insane. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher/
Lol development on it halts and resumes almost randomly, I’ve given up hope long ago.
Which really sucks as it’s the only launcher to have QuickSwitch support AFAIK.
Immediately switches to google play to turn off auto update for Nova Launcher
For anyone else:
Open the app on the play store click the “3 dot/hotdog” menu in the top right. You should be able to disable updates there.
You are better served by switching to a different launcher.
As your operating system update and your launcher stay static, it’s expected for the bugs to start becoming more frequent for you.
Here is some other launchers that you can switch to:
Open source:
Closed Source:
Meh. Nova is the best launcher in my opinion but I’ve already been version locked to the last release before this company bought it. I’ve basically given up in anyone else replicating the features I want. So I’ll be using this version of Nova until Google finally breaks it.
Same! I refuse to update it and got a little annoyed at a post I saw where the dev (at least I think it was him) said “hey it’s 1 year later and the world hasn’t exploded”. Found that a little annoying.
Let’s hope he gets control of the app back and can do nova again, without this shit baked in.
Edit: guess I should have RTFA first. Gross
we were all scared that they would do data mining or introduce ads on the launcher. They promised that they wouldn’t. Surprisingly, they kept the promise.
I’m surprised that could feed a team of 12 devs with a free app with small one time payment to unlock power features.
Isn’t the app mature enough to have a just full time dev behind to keep it updated with api changes?
Branch is apparently a $4B Silicon Valley startup, that raised $300M just two years ago. They can afford Nova’s team of twelve, or at least more than one fucking dev. They even fired Cliff, the one guy doing support (social, Discord, email, etc).
That said, I wish they wouldn’t have sold out. Nova is one of the few things I want to subscribe to, very well earned. Nobody can reasonably complain about $10-20 per year for “Prime Ultra” or something. I don’t even see a donate button in settings.
The reason Branch bought Nova is to use it for A/B testing and feedback (via Nova Discord), to test for things they could add in their other products.
One such feature is the new cards and search features. Nova doesn’t spy on you and they didn’t add ads, they just rely on the feedback given by the userbase.
Sadly they bow fired two employees whom, if I recall, handled support and PR. This means that the solo dev will have to do that too, which means slowdowns and less features in the future.
weird. who could have predicted a rug pull from an analytics and spyware company… lol.
if you get in bed with adtech vipers and don’t anticipate problems, you’re gullible as hell. if you don’t stop them (or worse, if you let them) ad people will sell you, your soul, and your passion to the devil for a single penny.
