Since a few folks seem unaware of this, I’m posting anew for visibility.
Yikes! I’ve been using it since like 2018 and liking it. Any alternatives?
You can find some solid open source alternatives here, the ones I like most are Lawn Chair and Kvæsitso:
https://alternativeto.net/software/nova-launcher/?license=opensource
lawnchair indeed ☞ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/app.lawnchair
That’s the outdated version.
It’s best to use the latest nightly build from here:
Switched to Niagara after Nova was bought off, but lately using the KISS launcher which does the job similar to Niagara when configured, and it’s FOSS.
Lawnchair is quite basic.
It was unfortunate, but not unexpected. Neo Launcher is a decent alternative, though it’s not quite on par with Nova, and their development has been very slow the last year. Benefit of GrapheneOS, I can just disable Nova’s network access, so I don’t really have to compromise here thankfully.
Just checked the app on my phone, 0 bites used, I don’t really think they get any live data from it.
Not yet. Nova Launcher 8 is the problem version and it’s still in beta. If you’re still using version 7, particularly 7.0.57, then it’s the version from before the buyout and it’s clean. It’s suspected they turned some analytics on with 7.0.58, but even that still looks clean to me. That is the only update they’ve pushed since the buyout.
My guess is they didn’t want to fuck with the current version, they just wanted to devote their focus to getting all the tracking shit into the upcoming major release.
If you disable auto updates now, you’ll probably be fine until it stops working
I’ve disabled network access to Nova on a stock Android phone with NetGuard https://netguard.me/
And if you worry about how to update NetGuard automatically you can do it with Obtainium
I quite like Neo/Omega launcher, it’s probably the best FOSS launcher I’ve found.
their development has been very slow the last year
This is the painful part. There are regressions that have been introduced which have sat their for years, and I’ve got no idea if they’ll ever be fixed. But such is the open source way, they owe me nothing and are still providing a generally good experience for free!
I greatly appreciate this
I had no fucking clue for two years. How much longer would I have remained ignorant? Frightening.
Well, the weird thing is they haven’t actually done anything to the app yet. Looks like they’re just focusing on the next major release. The version that has been available in the store for the last 2 years hasn’t been fucked with.
If you are concerned about analytics and tracking then I have bad news for you. Most apps on the Play Store are absolutely loaded with inbuilt trackers. You can check them using Exodus (or use the Aurora Store since privacy reports are displayed by default there).
Thank you for that site. Very useful.
I haven’t seen that feature on the aurora store, but I probably just missed it.
I expect free apps to have tracking, but if it’s something like an app launcher that needs so many permissions and is running all the time… That’s just horrific
I haven’t seen that feature on the aurora store, but I probably just missed it.
It’s towards the bottom of the page for whatever app you’re viewing. Sometimes it won’t have a privacy report available by default, but you can always go through to the website and generate one yourself. One of the worst apps I’ve found so far is the Woolworths one (Australian supermarket). It contains 11 trackers and within the first 6 hours following installation my tracker blocker had already prevented 11,325 tracking attempts.
Thanks for sharing. The default launcher on my phone is terrible and I hate having to move to different layouts every time I switch phones (which only happens every 5+ years, but is still annoying) so I have been using Nova for many years.
Just turned off its internet access on both data and wifi, let’s see if it complains about it.
As a note: I can see that it only transfered a few hundred kilobytes in the past month, which isn’t a lot, but it’s still more than zero.
