I’ve been just not updating Nova as I haven’t had a ton of time to research this, I really like the GUI, what are my privacy friendly/FOSS options for an android s21 5G?
Update: Went with Neo launcher. It’s got enough of the features that I’m willing to use it.
There are a few spots where padding can’t be removed that is obnoxious, FF search bar and dock are what I have noticed so far.
I also don’t like that I can’t continuosly scroll through my home screens.
Neo launcher is close
Kvaesitso is a great launcher
Seconding Kvaesito. Like many launchers, there’s some getting used to but I’m loving it.
Kvaesitso is fantastic. Can get it on fdroid.
It doesn’t use reproducible builds. using the github release directly is more secure. Just add https://github.com/mm2-0/kvaesitso to obtainium
Why is using the GitHub release more secure than using the F-Droid build?
Thanks, I know about reproducible builds, but I still don’t see how the GitHub release is more secure than the F-Droid build. In both cases you need to trust whoever built the apk.
It is known that F-Droid uses the published source code, reviews it for anti-features, and they build hundreds of apps used by thousands of people. If they did any tampering or had a security hole we would learn about it pretty fast (we just need one user of one of their built apps to report).
On the other hand using a GitHub release we need to trust the developer of the app: trust that the source code has no malicious code in it (or review the code ourselves, does anybody do that?), there’s no third party reviewing it, and trust that the apk they release uses exactly the published code. The user base of an individual app’s GitHub release is way smaller than that of all apps built by F-Droid, so by chance it would take way longer for users to detect any security problem.
So, as I see it, it boils down to either trusting a big community with a long story of building and providing FOSS apps, a good reputation, and offering reproducible builds on all apps that managed to achieve them; or trusting dozens of different developers, most of whom we know nothing of.
To add to this, “Kvaesitso is available in the official F-Droid repository, but all features depending on non-foss external APIs were removed.” This is preferable to a lot of people.
I appreciate this comment. I agree with both sides of the argument to an extent, but feel that there is some unbalanced thinking with this rejection of Fdroid that’s been happening. Its a hugely important service.
Yes, I feel like F-Droid has been getting some shit lately for no reason. I think it’s good that Obtainium exists and that we have more options of easily getting apps outside the Play Store, and even better: FOSS apps.
However, I see a trend towards “F-Droid is bad and Obtainium has arrived to save us from it” and get the feeling that many times people don’t even understand how both things work. Obtainium is basically doing what some people were doing for long time using RSS, it’s not a revolution. When I tried it, it failed to properly detect the latest versions and updates of several apps, so I was personally not impressed.
Removed by mod
Fdroid is not a virus scanner you can trust blindly. You have to trust both, app devs and fdroid. I fully agree with what you write. Most devs do not yet publish reproducible builds. Maybe Fdroid should’ve created a separate repo just for them and depreciating the old repo over time. There’s no way for the user to know if it is a reproducible build or not right now. I prefer fdroid with reproducible builds over obtainium but in it’s current state it’s ambiguous which method you should use. I lean towards obtainium. In hindsight I should’nt have stated it that confident
Neo needs an update. Still working but giving me more issues on Android 14.
No major bugs on my pixel 6
What kind of issues, and what ROM?
Been using it on stock pixel7a for a while and it keeps getting slower when I swipe to go home and the app drawer will a lot of times open but then not allow me to press any apps until I close the drawer and open it again.
I have been liking Niagara!
deleted
Fossify forked all the Simple Mobile Tools apps and are working on open source, free and ad-free apps with that as the foundation. They have published a few already, Launcher is in the pipeline: https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Launcher
I swapped from Nova Launcher to KISS. It is a different idea for a launcher but I have started to like it a lot.
Same. I felt I couldn’t live without Nova, now I feel like I can’t live without KISS. I really like the “swipe and type” flow to open an app and touching an empty area to open the recent entries. All that depends on your settings ofc. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s by far the fastest launcher I’ve had.
Ruthless Launcher is pretty nice. Unfortunately it’s not open source, but Exodus doesn’t show any trackers and if you use GrapheneOS you can simply revoke Network permissions
I haven’t found one that I like as much. My biggest hangup, and this is probably dumb, is the ability to edit the icons for PWAs so they don’t show the stupid browser icon that screams “I’m a web shortcut!!!”. I tried Hermit as a PWA/lite app replacement and Android just slaps the hermit badge on it instead. For whatever reason that annoys me enough to stick with Nova.
There is lawnchair launcher
But it’s been abandoned for a long time now
It was a damn fine launcher
It’s still usable, might be worth giving a try
Lawnchair, according to the devs, is not abandoned. In late November (of 2023), they said:
Sorry for the long break in Lawnchair announcements.
We have made significant progress in regards to Lawnchair development, and we are now actually developing Lawnchair 13 (with A13 QuickSwitch support) and custom-made no-root global search. Stay tuned for more updates and sneak peeks.
Coming soon to a lawnmower near you™
(And no, we are not dead. Also No ETAs.)
Then in December:
Hello again!
This time around, we are now developing Lawnchair 14 (with A14 QuickSwitch support). Alongside that, we are also re-adding an option to Hide Dock and options for custom Feed Providers, alongside other new features (we wont give too many spoilers 👀)
We also plan to support QuickSwitch for Android 11 to Android 14, so you can use Lawnchair with QuickSwitch on all your recent devices. (We will prioritize A12.1 to A14 first though).
(As always, No ETAs)
lawnchair is still being developed but no builds are being pushed. I’m using someone’s fork they made specifically to build their own releases: (use at your own discretion) https://github.com/Goooler/LawnchairRelease/
I’m still using lawnchair but internet cut off as it’s just a launcher so why would it even need internet?
I spent a few hours trying any alternatives I could find on FDroid, even Aurora and just blocking network access.
Lawnchair has a giant empty space on the dock when you hide the search bar, wasting screen space.
Ended up back on Nova.
We need more options. We don’t need any more “minimalist” text launchers though.
Yeah I’ve been looking for an alternative to Nova myself. I’ve tried many but I just keep coming back for one reason or another. .I have graphene os but the default launcher is a little too plain for me. The search continues I guess. I’ll check some listed here that I haven’t tried. Maybe lawnchair will be worth it when they put out a new release.
It’s not popular at all, but I love LukeLauncher on fdroid.
