[microflash]

What an undeserving fate. A beloved app now being passed from vulture to vulture who rip off every possible morsel they can.

When Branch bought Nova, I moved on to use Lawnchair [1], which is open source. Although it has been in beta like forever, with occasional glitches, it works well enough and has enough features to satisfy my customization cravings.

[1]: https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair

[0x1ch]

My biggest issue with lawnchair (and most launchers really) is that they all are horribly glitchy on my Pixel 6, and also break the app drawer / switching feature.

I literally just want a vanilla pixel experience, but be allowed to change the search engine on the home screen searchbar... This got me into the weeds on the widget and launcher ecosystem and they're all very bad.

[JoshTriplett]

I highly recommend Octopi Launcher. It's simple, has customization you might want without requiring it in order to be useful, and works great on various phones.

Also great on foldables, since it lets you have a different home screen for different display sizes.

[sweetbacon]

This is very good to know! I am currently setting up my old pixel 6 to be a permanent Google home terminal. I was thinking about trying Lawnchair, now I'm not so sure.

[jjordan]

The write-up on the link seems promising, at least. I'm sure ads will come to the free version, but they appear to be respecting Nova's legacy and longtime Prime purchasers. Anything is better than the slow decay it has been enduring the last year or two. Can't do much but be cautiously optimistic.

[malfist]

Last update introduced a bunch of ads and tracking plugins. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686655

[andrepd]

You can just... not update? It's a launcher, how much more is there to change? I have a version from 2017 on my phone lol.

[alias_neo]

I'll have whatever you're smoking please.

You don't acquire something like this, as a metrics company, who does cohort analysis and touchpoint tracking[0] simply to make a bit of ad revenue.

Nova is dead. No room left for optimism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_(company)

[theturtletalks]

It’s becoming evident that open-source is the only thing that can cure Enshittification. Every proprietary application will become enshittified, it’s just a matter of when.

[charcircuit]

Many open source projects fail to find sustainable funding. If a cure is not financially viable it is not much different than the cure not existing.

[saubeidl]

rms was right all along.

[nirui]

Was a Nova user, moved to Lawnchair yesterday. It's not the same experience I got from Nova (for example, the Clock widget don't work), but the adaptation is not unbearable.

I purchased Nova Launcher Prime years ago thinking it was the best investment I put on Google Play, well, maybe I should've spent the money on something else.