Hacker News Reader

Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

I was fed up with Google increasing insistence on pushing crap onto my home screen. The unavoidable news feed was the last straw. I have now installed Nova Launcher and it's made my phone great again. No Google crap on the home screen at all.

View on HN

I also highly recommend nova launcher. I've been using it for years and honestly forgot that Google forces you to have a searchbar on the home screen.

is just second nature at this stage that nova launcher gets installed straight away. export/import the settings and you're all set to go

ADW Launcher is another, minimalist good alternative.

I switched to Lawnchair. It feels close to Google Launcher, but with just enough customization to be super easy to setup yet flexible enough.

Nova Launcher persisted in keeping that Do Evil search box out of sight, despite my upgrade to Android 9 two days ago. I'm very happy with Nova.

Did you manage to fix Android's Chrome homescreen to remove the feed there?

Yes! By using Firefox.

I sometimes wonder if HN is just another conspiracy-theorists forum.

You can disable Google News feed, you can remove Google Search from home screen, you can even use Bing as Assist app (long press on Home icon) in place of Google. Everything on stock Android Oreo on Sony Xperia.

Hey, you can even disable location services. Use VPN with split tunelling for Google Play Services.

Google is no saint but it ain't a devil either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com