I have left Branch and am no longer involved with Nova Launcher
teslacoilapps.com
teslacoilapps.com
Forget the public statements, those are worth their weight in gold; but what about the alleged contract here? Does it not actually exist, or is it not worth the legal battle?
This is limiting and completely rules out implementing effects like blurs or a Liquid Glass lookalike unless you want to make the user set the wallpaper in the launcher separately. Totally killed my motivation to build further.
Still has some limits, though, like inability to blur specific parts of the image (e.g. under a box) and apparently the Android skin that ships with some devices disables that window blurring feature, in which case it won’t work. Better than nothing but still restricts the scope of what’s possible quite a lot.
My guess is, this might have to do with fixed layers in the Hardware Composer HAL, which offloads compositing that otherwise (I guess) Surface Flinger would need GPU/CPU for.
That still gives you the image data which might be private, but we should be able to lock that behind a permission dialog "Allow access to current desktop background image" or whatever. It's a weird and very specific permission but it might be worth having.
I don’t understand how I would be deciding what’s best for users?
The only reason why third party launchers wouldn’t support live wallpapers is if Google didn’t give devs the tools to render them. All they’d need to do is include a WallpaperView the dev can add to their view hierarchy that supports live wallpapers. Boom, the dev can do fancy effects and the user loses nothing.
I think this model would make a lot of sense for Android launchers, too, given how they continually run and potentially have access to much more user data than is typical.
Now what to do? Android apps is rarely a thing that you download once and use for multiple years.
I've been using FOSS apps, Amaze File Manager, Muzei (wallpaper manager), and Lawnchair (Launcher), for well over 8 years across multiple Android devices and versions, with nary an issue.
The situation with Nova (and SimpleMobileTools before it) is that developers are selling their popular projects. This isn't an "Android" thing, but more of an indictment of sustainability of indie FOSS projects. This isn't limited to consumer apps, though (see: Redis).
One day the makers disappeared from the Play Store, voila, no more auto-enshittification, I win!
Having to change your launcher every 10 years isn't too bad.
Exactly this. I bought Nova 10 years ago (December 2015), and I even paid only 10 cent (Google had some absurd sales on apps back then). Till today, I'm using it, receiving updates, and never paid another cent to the dev AFAIK. I don't know how they even financed their business, but even as popular as it was (is?), I doubt they are swimming in money.
I can understand why so many apps end up in subscription-traps, or are selling the whole business to someone else. But at the same time it's insane that as a customer it's really hard to find a useful app, and have a way to continue support on a low level. For example, I probably wouldn't have a problem with paying Nova some dollar every time I switched to a new device, to get a new compatible version. But I can't even do that. There is barely any mobile app iterating this way through the android-versions. So they all are either dying at some point, or end in a trap.
Nova already seemed to be stuck 10 years in the past, also it had accumulated too many features that made it cumbersome to configure.
They tie essentials with the spyware so it would be nearly impossible to get rid of it without gimping the device.
I already forgot most of the details, but afaik even xiaomi apk installer has meta and bytedance trackers, in addition to like 20 more. Their mostly useless "Security" app has like 60 trackers (Includes even yandex ;) ). And you can't even really get rid of it.
An example: https://issuetracker.google.com/u/0/issues/296108449?pli=1
https://piunikaweb.com/2024/01/15/recent-apps-button-not-wor...
How such a glaring bug could slip through the cracks of "the iPhone of Androids"? No idea, but it suggest very poor QA.
Worse still, that bug on an essential feature of the phone (which older Android phones even had a physical button to invoke it) has been around for more than a year. Literally nobody at Google has yet sat down and checked the Jira ticket to fix an "if ()" somewhere in the code causing the bug.
Combine this with the common method of literally fetching static files with updated IPs from AWS IPs, github gists, and other "safe" static hosts... Ultimately, your device connects to the internet, and you become the product.
And it is very much that. I just discovered Nova and installed it on my new Lenovo tablet, where they have a setting for changing the launcher. No matter, their old launcher just keeps on starting, fighting Nova and making it glitch out.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=projekt.launch...
Has a bug with 120hz VRR or OneUI and also kinda abandoned.
1. Homescreen with (fully custom) widgets, app icons, folders.
2. App drawer with search and auto pop-up keyboard that shows new apps by default.
* Microsoft Launcher got close, but it’s essentially an ad for microsoft products. In addition, I can’t choose to have folder labels without app labels.
* Smart Launcher 6 as the only one ticked all boxes, but the UX of home screen adjustments is abysmal. I long press whatsapp, there I click the settings button, there I click the X, then I have to confirm I really want to remove the icon. Long press + 3 clicks for removing an icon from the homescreen. What? I guess it’s not a super frequent action, but when I’m expected to pay $22 for the premium version, I really would prefer not having such an annoyance.
I tried some others, both free and freemium, including Lawnchair, but for now I’m back at Nova.
> Cliff: Branch owns Nova completely and Kevin has no access to it in any way at all. So no, he can't re-brand, keep coding and go forward. That's a breach of contract on his behalf.
...but this post says they are obligated to:
> Cliff: Much more to it than word of mouth. There's a contract as well.
Two breaches of contract don‘t make a right
Apparently there are two conflicting contracts (or two sections within one contract), and Branch is counting on the fact that Branch can go after Kevin but Kevin can't/won't. Or maybe the contract is clear, but Kevin just doesn't want to burn the ships.
Branch is obliged to open source the Launcher.
That’s it.
An employee of a company just isn’t allowed to do it on his own.
If a company refuses to pay a bill that it should pay, then one of its accountants cannot simply transfer money.
I'm bummed Sesame got bought by these guys and stopped updating for no ultimate reason.
Hyperion seemed to have all necessary features, but the UI was unintuitive and the documentation non-existent.
I also liked Lynx, but that would be a major change for me.
I like that I have to consciously type in who j app I want to open. Prevents me from spacing out and opening reddit out of pure habit.
My reason to use Nova before was:
- REMOVE search bar from home screen, unlike the Pixel launcher
- Have the usual, customizable row of quick launchers across the bottom
- Have basic app drawer and background apps gestures pull up from bottom
- Add a couple basic widgets like Calendar and clock to home screen, or other app shortcuts
- Minimal permissions, no ads, no network-based features
Based on this, I just started trying out Fossify Launcher Beta, installed from F-Droid. It seems OK so far. My only complaint is that there seem to be multiple gestures that open up a Launcher menu, and I wish this was limited to just long press on the home screen background.
Also having some issues getting widgets on there... But Android is Android, so I'm sure it's not Fossify Launcher's fault, I had the widget I wanted and then I removed it cause I wanted a different size, and it won't add again. A restart will probably help. (Spoiler: it didn't)
Would also be nice if I could make widgets 2.5 columns wide. I like a 5 wide screen, but I want two widgets to share the screen width.
I also noticed that the widget editing is a bit clumsy with resizing on Fossify Launcher. It seems like there is some hidden state where long-press doesn't quite work the same way after some interaction. But I was able make progress after going through several other interactions like opening the menu via back gesture from home screen, locking and unlocking the screen, etc.
I don't know if it is Android or the launcher itself that makes the widget sizing so annoying. It seems to have a different bounding box for the resizing tool than what is actually rendered, so I end up with way more dead space around the widgets than I wanted.
I saw a prerelease one on Play Store that said it would do extra feedback telemetry. I bailed at that point and didn't look further.
Makes opening go-to apps faster, but opening anything else slower. Worth it imo
Besides being a good, very simple, minimalistic launcher, it's also Open Source (https://github.com/tanujnotes/Olauncher), ad-free, and collects and shares no data.
If the developer is building the code that's on GitHub, it is curious why AppGoblin flags the Play Store version for using Firebase: https://appgoblin.info/apps/app.olauncher/data-flows
Is there any way to support the development — financially or otherwise?
Pro Launcher: https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=719880784008107493... BMAC: https://buymeacoffee.com/tanujnotes
Could also be that 0launcher has changed over the past four or five years.
I'd recommend you to at least try it for a while before you slam down the opinionated hammer.
Once you get used to it, you'll never get back to classic launchers.
I really like the intentionality of what I launch, and I find the "search for app" faster than folders.
It's available on IzzyOnDroid, though I installed the GitHub release. It does have some bugs, every now and then it freezes and you need to go to the Apps submenu in Configuration to restart it.
It sucks and there is nothing anyone can do really, but maybe you'd consider making a brand new launcher?
Edit: Oh I just got the name, it's a "launcher"