Google Now Launcher to Be Pulled from the Play Store in Q1 2017 | Hacker News Reader

Google Now Launcher to Be Pulled from the Play Store in Q1 2017

arstechnica.com

43 pointsprashnts19 comments

How will this affect devices that came with the Now launcher? Will they still receive updates or automatically be replaced with the pixel launcher?

Remember the crazy mess Google created when they decided to drop the sms app in favor of hangout? At some point it seemed like 1B+ people couldn't send/receive text messages and the Google exec's didn't even knew or cared.

The article pointed out the app just flips some flags to allow you to use functionality built into Android or the search app. Also, Google is just pulling it from the app store. Worst case, we are back to using a third party app to enable it or finding the apk.

Android phones don't really come with a Google Now launcher, they just don't put their own skin on their phones over stock android

My Nexus 5 came with the Google Now launcher.

Because that is a Google branded phone.

So did my Moto G4.

Nexus? ️

As the OP notes, the code for the Google Now and Pixel launchers is in the Search app rather than in the launcher apps themselves.

So, sideloading the Google Now app as a solution for a new phone after Google Now is no longer available in the Play store will only be useful as long as the internal Search app API doesn't change.

Any suggestions for those of us who like the Now Launcher?

In fact, any suggestions generally? I could go for a lighter launcher.

I'm not sure if it's lighter but after using the Now Launcher for a long time I switched to Nova Launcher Prime about a year ago on my Nexus 6P and it's been fantastic.

It has some great additional features, is well maintained and updated, and I've never experienced any crashed or UI stutters/lag due to Nova. Nova has a free version with almost all the same features as the paid version, and no ads, so you can test it out.

+1 for Nova here too - used it for years on a variety of phones, and I've not found another launcher which works as well with such a good feature set; there are lots of nice touches in there and the author seems to keep it up to date with new UI developments (such as the recent update which has some pixel features added). Well worth the small extra for the full version to help support it.

Hard to suggest an alternate launcher since :

-at the moment it is not possible to integrate with Google Now the way the Now launcher does. Although it looks like this is officially going to change (and one of the motivations behind this move)

-tastes in launchers vary widely from one person to the others. I have quickly uninstalled pretty much all of the launchers I have tried since they all tend to give bazillions of options instead of focusing on good defaults.

Nova is pretty good and paid version has promotions for dollar

ADW launcher Beta 2 is pretty good as well, but i uninstalled it because of annoying advertisements and developer's reputation

Holo launcher is as light as you can get with enough functionality without installing Chinese spyware

other than that only Lightning launcher which cost a lot and not sure how is it better than Nova

Trebuchet is really nice

Clickbait: it's not like Google is removing their launcher from the Store, it's just Google Now Launcher being superseded by the Pixel Launcher.

That's a bit of a simplistic interpretation, IMO. If the intent was just to supersede the functionality of one launcher with that of another, upgrading the Google Now launcher would make more sense (especially as the functionality of both is actually within the Search app).

I have a feeling that a (perhaps only slightly) more significant refactor is in the works, for example making the Google app itself the "official" launcher, or doing away with a separate "launcher" app altogether in favor of emphasizing the voice recognition capabilities.

EDIT: It looks like what Google is doing is actually making the Google Now card functionality available through a new Search Launcher Services API to official Android Partners: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-would-google-pull-google-n...

> it's just Google Now Launcher being superseded by the Pixel Launcher.

Any links for this? The Pixel Launcher is definitely not available on non-Pixel phones yet.

It would be the only logical implication, but there's no confirmation yet that Google plans to do this.

also rumors said it will return with integrated google assistant so it's rather good news?

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