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Nova Launcher could soon add a proactive AI assistant that sucks up all your data (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 52 points 6 months ago (25 children)

I was still using it because I was too lazy to migrate things over to another.

And then I saw this post, so I guess it was time. Only took half an hour to figure out how to get Lawnchair doing basically what I wanted it to.

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  • [–] 37 points 6 months ago (22 children)

    Octopi Launcher is damn near a replacement. Learn nothing new, muscle memory for swiping up or down on dock icons to open other apps.

    Those were my requirements and it nails it.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    Lawnchair is darn close, and FOSS. Recommending another closed source option usually leads down the same road.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (7 children)

    How can you tell whether or not something is FOSS in Google Play?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)

    Unfortunately not easily. Most mention it in descriptions or have links to GitHub/etc. For me, I used to search FDroid to check but I'm pretty selective about the apps I use. Now I do most things through Obtainium, but as a Graphene user I'm certainly not the norm.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    I couldn't find Lawnchair in F-Droid.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Sigh.. Lawnchair is the absolute worst of the worst for install/discovery. Because it got taken over by another developer, it's been all "beta" releases on GitHub forever, even though a truckload of people daily drive it.

    https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/releases

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    I've been daily driving it for a while and really want it to be better. Its hard to complain since it's FOSS, but one of my most used features from the old Lawnchair 2 version (tabs in the app drawer) hasn't been implemented in the new version since development was effectively reset/restarted.

    Maybe it's time to move on and check out Octopi...

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    OK, so I don't recommend this often, but there is a FOSS option closer to Nova than Lawnchair. It's called Neo Launcher: https://github.com/neoapplications/neo-launcher

    It may be worth a shot, I ran the release on GitHub for about a year. I stopped because the devs are doing this brainrot thing of putting releases as beta in their Discord, so the release file on GitHub is old. I hate that practice so much that I stopped recommending it, even though it's a slightly better launcher with more options IMO.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I appreciate the recommendation, however, I can't support any dev who uses Discord for releases/support. I'm doing what I can to move friends and family once a viable alternative is available. I know a bunch were being recommended a couple of weeks ago, but I need 80%+ feature parity and simple a install and use flow before most will consider it.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    The one feature I use most of all on Nova is swipe down on the screen to search. I has that all the time and would be tough to give up. I also really like the ability to swipe up on a folder and have it launch the first app in the folder.

    I'll give Octopi a try on an older phone and hopefully it has some of these same features.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    I'm trying out Octopi right now, seems nice so far. But, is there any way to make folders open the first app with a tap, and open the folder by swiping? That's how I used Nova for years and years, very hard to break away from that

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Just curious, would you then view the folder with a swipe down?

    Not seeing a way to change folder tap but you could pbly request that. It's a single developer and I've been very happy to support them to get away from Nova. I've been using Octopi since last year and it's been great!

    You can set up individual apps with swipe up and swipe down as well though, so if there's a main app in your folder you could break it out and at least get 2 other apps to open via swipes. Not the same I know.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I like for it to open folders with a swipe and open the first app of the folder with a tap. I have figured out how to do this in Octopi now thanks to the other reply! Although it becomes slightly an issue with how folders in the dock behave slightly differently than folders on the home pages. But I think it's close enough to be a workable replacement for Nova finally!

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    lawnchair is what I swapped to a few years back. I do want to warn.. be careful updating it. Always make a backup of lawnchair prior to allowing it to update because ive had it fail to update twice now and have had to restore the backup on the new version.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Yeah I switched to lawn chair a few months ago because I kept seeing these stories about Nova's parent company. I like it just fine—i haven't had the issues you have (thankfully)—but there are a few features I miss from nova. Oh well, I'd rather have the peace of mind than the minor feature.

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