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The end of Nova is confirmed

This was posted by Kevin Barry, the original developer and founder of Nova Launcher.

So long and thanks for all the fish

Hacker News @lemmy.bestiver.se

So Long

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Android @lemmy.world

The last Nova dev is gone

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41 comments
  • Ad company buys popular launcher -> promises its not going anywhere°> breaks promise

    Who could have seen that coming? /s

  • Weird, launchers like this have such a small niche community already. I'm surprised they want to piss them off. Linux/nerds like us aren't well known for being forgiving.

  • the buying of it by the ad company was awful but there were never any open source fdroid launchers that were as good. kevin open sourcing it will hopefully help get a decent open source launcher going, hopefully!

    • I'm reading this as it's not going to be open sourced. He was asked to stop working on the app and the open sourcing effort.

  • This was bound to happen. Perhaps Barry can make a new launcher that replicates the Nova Experience.

  • I got Nova Premium on a sale and used it ever since, but I had some issues with it on an older phone with lower resources, so I switched to the default launcher (which was still cool btw, I could open the app drawer straight from the recents menu).

    After I got a new phone and went for Android 14 I discovered that the search bar in the app drawer of the default launcher opened the Google app instead of being a simple search screen with all the apps. Also, I couldn't have themed icons in the app drawer. So I tried Nova again and it didn't have these either.

    I took advantage of this and decided to try something that would not be based on AOSP, and Kvæsitso seems to be pretty much what I was looking for. My only problem is the fact that I cannot add more than one widget per row but that does make for a more minimalist setup tbh.

  • I tried other Launchers mentioned like Niagara, MSFT, Octopii, Lawnchair. But, I want horizontal App Drawer and stability like NOVA. Nothing beats NOVA atm. that is shame

  • I guess you can keep using it? I don't think I noticed any new features lately anyways.

  • I'm looking for a launcher that can hide a folder under a typical icon. I love the swipe up to open the folder, or tap to open the app functionality from Nova. It looks nice but still has everything i commonly use just a swipe and tap away.

    I've taken a quick look at Lawnchair, Kvaesitso, and KISS, but those don't seem to have that capability.

41 comments