Nova Launcher could soon introduce Nova AI, a built-in AI assistant complete with a chatbot, and a new Nova Plus subscription tier
Nova Launcher could soon introduce Nova AI, a built-in AI assistant complete with a chatbot, and a new Nova Plus subscription tier
A third party launcher for Android(homescreen). It was very beloved for being clean and lightweight while also having a bunch of customization.
It was bought up by an adware company not long ago.
What I don’t get is: why exactly is such software so popular ? Does one really need it instead of just swiping twice or thrice to find the app one is looking for?
The stock default launchers tend to suck for one reason for another. Icons taking up a lot more screen space than needed is a major one for me.
Being able to adjust grid size is a great advantage to custom launchers.
i think my Samsung had this shitty search feature or something that wanted to put a bunch of shit on one of my pages. Can’t quite remember. But I know Google recently did the same thing with the Pixel. There’s this fucking search bar that takes up the whole bottom of the screen on every single page. And they won’t let you remove it. That alone was enough for me to switch.
That damn search bar was the only reason I ever started looking at launchers. I used LG and Samsung phones for years and wanted a more streamlined interface closer to stock android, so I got a pixel.
And the very first time I turned it on, I was incredibly disappointed to see this giant Google logo nailed to the bottom of the screen, existing only to provide functionality that I don’t want.
So into the launcher rabbit hole I dove.
Some of us also enjoy customizing and designing our own home screen. I have mine set up to just show my wallpaper and a grid of 9 icons. You can also change icons, icon shape, etc. I have simple icons for my folders rather than an ugly icon with 4 little icons inside it that seems to be the default for “folder” on all phones.
I enjoy the aesthetics of it. I think it’s ironic that iPhones are so freaking ugly and messy when their whole brand was built on clean design.
It’s putting whatever you want and what you don’t want on the home screen, including for example launching into search.
My phone stock launcher search dialog that once would have been to type the app name became a ‘multi-search’ that would do internet search and AI search and app search was sluggish and third set of results. So I go for a launcher that keeps the app search field just a quick name based search of applications.
It does also do things like let me opt into fitting more icons on the screen at a time, since the default launcher has some ludicrous small number of icons on screen at a time.
Also, the scrolling lets me scroll letters to rapidly get to apps starting with ‘m’ for example without typing, though I never use that.
It also presents a different ‘folder’ design where a tap on it launches a default app from the group, and a quick slide opens it up to select a less popular, alternate app quickly.
Also, two finger swipe from top takes me straight to typing app name to launch.
Someone else I knew swapped launchers just to have a different wallpaper behavior that their stock launcher wouldn’t do.
Currently using Octopi.