This evening I at looked several replacement launchers, such as Lawnchair and even the stock Pixel launcher again, but Octopi Launcher[2] is the more modern, more refined Nova replacement that you are looking for.
It was a very easy, natural transition process from Nova - all of the Nova features that I used were there (unlike Lawnchair), such as swipe up/down on icons to perform different actions. And little things like folder options, icon placement, and widget handling are SO much nicer on Octopi compared to Nova. Staggeringly better.
I took a screenshot of each home screen page, set Octopi as the new default launcher, and was back to my previous configuration but with a significantly improved visual appearance, in about 15 minutes. It's a no-brainer upgrade from Nova.
The Google Play install is free and basically unlimited, but there is an unobtrusive "Buy Me A Coffee" type button that allows you to donate either $1 or $3 to unlock some eye candy, which I did, but mostly just wanting to support the developer.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45170000
[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/exclusive-cliff-wade-nova-laun...
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otp.octopi...
Padding is a little different and harder to discover than Nova - it is in the "Customize appearance" menu when you long tap on a widget. That is something to check out, as well as making sure Rounded Corners aren't enabled.
There is also a "Freely position and resize items" option in the Launcher Settings->Home tab, which I do not have enabled, but might be necessary to get your widget sizing just right?
I’ll certainly not exclude this being a meteoblue issue (I only use two widgets, digical and meteoblue), but Hyperion (only with 6 columns) and Nova (always) get it right.
If you're in the US, I like NOAA Weather Unofficial[0]. It is not quite as visually impressive as meteoblue, but has good technical details and the 4x2 widget resized exactly like I wanted. I think the free version is unrestricted, but it is another app where I explicitly wanted to support the developer.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstudio.we...
8.1.6:
- Branch (analytics)
- Bugsnag (crash report)
8.2.4:
- Facebook Ads (advertisement)
- Google AdMob (advertisement)
- Branch (analytics)
- Bugsnag (crash reporting)
- Google CrashLytics (crash reporting)
- Google Firebase Analytics (analytics)
Lawnchair has fewer options, ie. is simpler, but I haven't, in practice, noticed any memorable differences.
Unfortunately, the app list page isn't quite as configurable. There are folders rather than tabs, and there's an extra click necessary to search by app name. Overall, it does the job.
The only improvement I could imagine is supporting multiple screens of widgets (i.e. swiping left/right or scrolling up/down).
For folks interested in checking it out:
Website: https://kisslauncher.com/ Source: https://github.com/Neamar/KISS Store: https://f-droid.org/packages/fr.neamar.kiss/
But then when I use a launcher like lawnchair with widgets I rarely end up actually using them. Wish there was something like widget drawer that was FOSS tbh
Unique device identifiers Approximate geographic position (city level) IDs (package names) from installed apps Usage Data Cookies
Oh boy...
It’s interesting, Lawnchair works totally fine with these “app action” 1×1 widgets, and Firefox can add website shortcuts without any problem for me. I’ll try it in Brave a bit later.
The APK is at least 6 years old now.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otp.octopi...
It is the perfect Nova Launcher replacement. The UI and features feels like a more polished Nova and transitioning to Octopi is such an intuitive process.
What do you folks use 3rd party launchers for?
Checked again and I don't see a way to get a button to show the app drawer on Lawnchair, and I don't want to use a gesture, so that's going to be hard to use.
I run with a 9x7 home screen grid and 8x6 app drawer.
This allows me to have a weather widget with a large clock and an excellent calendar widget called Todo Agenda displayed while still allowing me to have all my apps accessible on one screen.
Kvaesitso (FLOSS) and AIO: Different style of launcher that I don’t want, so out.
Action: Felt weird to use, didn’t find a setting for auto search in app drawer
Smart launcher: The most expensive one at 25€, and no proper app drawer search either.
Lawnchair (FLOSS): Annoying animations, widgets don’t work properly (many widgets require Yx2 sizing that should work as Yx1)
Octopi: Slightly better widgets than lawnchair, but still sizing issues. Without that I’d probably have gone with it first.
Hyperion: This is what I’ll be testing for now. The only Nova feature I’m missing is showing recently installed apps in the drawer, but that’s extremely minor. Apparently support is bad and updates rare, but neither is an issue for me.
I've been using this app for ages and it's been essentially feature-complete for several years. A part of me wants to switch launchers for no other reason than "it is supported and not tracking me", but it is possible for software to be finished, and I believe Nova falls into that category. If there's no meaningful vulnerabilities in it, there's really no reason for me to switch away, at least not immediately.
I can't help but think there's a lot of devs here pushing their own products.
That said, check out Octopi Launcher. I installed it for the first time tonight[0] and it is exactly what you are looking for - a smoother, better Nova Launcher.
Any recommendations for launchers that are functionally similar? The launchers mentioned in this thread so far are quite different.
If you're not set in the traditional page/app drawer launcher, I'd recommend Kvaesitso. It's a FOSS search based launcher. A bit of a learning curve but it is very performant and feature rich.
If anyone knows of another launcher with app drawer tabs, let me know.
Damn these privacy-invading leeches.
Thanks for sharing.