I don't believe this at all. If they aren't lying, then why did they add new trackers?
What are other good customizable launchers on Android nowadays?
Enshittification is real!
I tried Lawnchair out when figuring out what I was going to replace Nova with. I didn't end up choosing it, but if I had known they tried to do this (even if it only made it to the alpha channel) I wouldn't have even bothered to try it out.
But I assume the dev then is the dev now. That he was OK introducing something like that, even 9 years ago, tells me that his values and my values are very far apart.
I did actually evaluate it (before I knew this history) and it didn't meet my needs, so I chose something else purely on technical grounds anyway.
I recently moved to AIO Launcher and I've been really enjoying it. I'm sure it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea though.
I am a paid Nova user from a decade ago, but haven't used it in ages fwiw.
You can scratch at the very least contribution workflow from that list; anyhow, the original author had already spent months preparing the open source release, ironing out legal and dependency issues, so everything should already be there or pretty close, at least on the technical side of things (arguably one of the biggest sides)
August 2024 everyone working on it was laid off except the original dev https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/9/24217077/nova-launcher-lay...
September 2025 the original dev left after being told to stop work on open sourcing it https://www.theverge.com/news/773937/nova-launcher-founder-l...
> If ads are introduced, Nova Prime will remain ad free. Our guiding principles are clear: keep the experience clean and fast, avoid disruptive formats, and provide a straightforward way to keep the experience ad free.
Seems pretty clear.
Not for everyone, but it's my preferred way to use a phone now.
Nova carried me for almost a decade, and I'll miss it.
I agree, it's fine. It's missing a couple of niceties that I enjoyed with Nova, but nothing I can't live without.
When Branch bought Nova, I moved on to use Lawnchair [1], which is open source. Although it has been in beta like forever, with occasional glitches, it works well enough and has enough features to satisfy my customization cravings.
But it does what it does and that's all. It's been a long, long time since Google believed in the concept of options or customizability. If you want to do something outside the default, well you can go straight to hell. Which is fine, I guess, since we still have great options for launchers out there.
I've been a paid Nova user and used it on every android device for the past 10 years or so.
I ended up migrating to the stock OnePlus launcher and it's actually surprisingly good, other than you have to disable the stupid google recommended page every time you reboot the phone, so I'm still open to alternatives.
Unfortunately it's built/bundled with Lineage, and you can't find a standalone APK for it anywhere
ChrisArchitect•2h ago
Related:
Nova Launcher added Facebook and Google Ads tracking
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686655
(lots of good discussion about alternatives in this thread by the way)